Lean Organisation is Key: In the world of boutique festivals, a lean team with crystal-clear role definitions can make the difference between a smooth show and a chaotic scramble. Small festivals often run on tight budgets and tight schedules – there’s no room for confusion over who’s handling what. By avoiding last-minute “heroics” and instead setting up a solid organisational structure from the start, even a tiny team can punch above its weight. Clarity in roles isn’t just a nice-to-have; it saves time, stress, and money you don’t have to waste. Below, we break down how to set up a crisp mini org chart (with backups!), assign decision-making authority, run efficient team check-ins, and keep everything documented in one place. These practical steps are drawn from real festival lessons and will help ensure your small festival runs like a well-oiled machine.
Draft a Crisp Org Chart (With Backups)
One of the first steps for any small festival team is to draft a simple organisational chart – even if your entire staff could fit in a photo booth. Map out all the key roles that need covering, from logistics to creative direction, and assign a name (or two) to each. Often, festival organisers wear multiple hats, especially in boutique events; an individual might be both the site manager and the artist liaison, for example. That’s fine – list each hat as a distinct role on the chart so everyone understands when they are acting as which.
Backups are essential. For every critical role, assign a backup person who can take over if needed. In a lean team, redundancies are rarely built-in, so intentionally plan some overlap. Think of it like understudies in a theater: if the lead can’t perform, someone else knows the part. For instance, if your technical director (in charge of sound and lights) falls ill during the festival, who steps up? At a regional music festival in Canada, a family-run team assigned each major task to a lead and a deputy – when the main generator technician got stuck in traffic, his deputy (a volunteer he had trained) initiated the power-up on schedule, avoiding delays. Without that contingency, the opening act might have gone on in silence!
Even giant festivals started small with ad-hoc teams, and those who succeeded learned to formalise roles early. Glastonbury Festival (UK) famously began in 1970 as a one-day event on Michael Eavis’s farm with just a few helpers; even then they divvied up duties like stage setup, ticket gates, and fetching supplies. As the festival grew, that early habit of clear task allocation evolved into a more complex crew structure covering everything from site operations to artist hospitality – but the principle remained the same. Another example comes from the St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival, which launched in 2005 as a small Melbourne street party. The two founders each focused on their strengths – Danny Rogers booked the artists while Jerome Borazio managed the venue logistics (concreteplayground.com). Thanks to this split, they delivered a stellar first edition (about 1,400 people showed up) and even successfully expanded the following year by bringing in an experienced promoter to help navigate a new city (concreteplayground.com). The lesson is clear: define who does what from day one, and don’t hesitate to delegate or bring in help for areas outside your expertise.
When drawing up your org chart, name specific people for each responsibility. Instead of “Social Media is handled by Team,” write “Ayesha – Social Media Manager (Backup: Ben).” Instead of a vague “Production Lead,” specify “Marco – Stage & Sound Coordinator (Backup: Lina).” This way, there’s no ambiguity. Everyone on the team should know exactly who to call for what issue. It also makes it easier to identify gaps – if you realize one name is next to five major jobs, you might be stretching that person too thin. Either reassign some duties or recruit an extra hand or volunteer to assist. A lean festival team functions best when each member has a clear domain and backup support, rather than a few heroes trying to do everything at once.
Assign Decision Rights for Key Areas
Defining roles isn’t just about dividing the workload – it’s also about clarifying decision-making authority. In a small festival setup, it’s common for decisions to bottleneck or fall through cracks if it’s unclear who has the final say. Identify key areas where clear decision rights are crucial, especially safety, communications, and creative direction (the festival content and experience). Making it explicit who decides on what will prevent dangerous hesitations and turf wars.
Safety: Every festival, no matter the size, must prioritise safety and compliance. Designate a Safety Officer or Safety Lead from the start – this could be someone on your team with experience in event safety or a trusted external advisor if you can afford one. This person (and their backup) has the authority to halt or modify plans if they see a serious risk. For example, if bad weather rolls in or a structure looks unstable, everyone should know that the Safety Lead’s word is final on delays, cancellations, or evacuations. There have been tragic examples in larger events underscoring this need: investigations into the Astroworld 2021 crowd crush highlighted confusion over who could stop the show when things went wrong. Don’t let that happen at your festival – even if you have 500 attendees instead of 50,000, empower someone to make immediate safety calls. Your Safety Lead will coordinate things like risk assessments, first aid arrangements, crowd management plans, and liaising with emergency services. In a small team they might double up as site manager too, but when wearing the safety hat, their decisions carry weight for everyone.
Communications (Comms): Whether it’s marketing before the event or urgent announcements during the show, your festival needs a clear voice. Assign a Communications Manager to own all official messaging. This includes social media posts, press releases, emails to ticket holders, and even on-site loudspeaker announcements. When only a few people are running the show, it’s easy for messaging to become inconsistent (or for something important to never get communicated at all). Avoid that by funneling comms through one person or a very small team. For instance, a community festival in New Zealand found success by having one spokesperson handle all media and attendee updates when severe weather forced schedule changes – attendees got a single, coherent message and knew where to find updates, which kept everyone safer and calmer. The Comms lead should have decision rights on what gets communicated and when. Of course they’ll coordinate with others (you wouldn’t announce a major change without consulting the festival director), but once a decision is made, they craft the message and disseminate it through approved channels. This prevents a scenario where, say, an enthusiastic team member posts unconfirmed news on Facebook or multiple people send mixed signals about schedule or entry policy. A unified communications approach builds trust with your audience and can literally be life-saving in emergencies.
Creative (Content & Experience): Creative decisions cover your festival’s soul – the lineup, programming, art installations, theme, and overall vibe. In a small festival team, passion runs high and everyone might have ideas. That’s wonderful, but you still need a clear Creative Director or Programming Lead who can make the final call on artistic matters. If you have multiple co-founders, decide who holds the reins for creative choices to avoid deadlock. For example, if you’re running a boutique indie music festival, someone needs to have the last word on which bands get booked or how the stages are scheduled. Input from others is valuable, but creative by committee can get messy (or expensive). Many successful small festivals have a strong vision because one person or a tight-knit programming team curates the experience consistently. Think of Fyre Festival – it had massive hype and creative ambitions (luxury island experience, top models promoting it), but behind the scenes there was a lack of experienced leadership in decision-making. One of the Fyre co-founders later admitted the team “we weren’t experienced enough to keep up” (www.vulture.com) – not surprisingly, the event descended into mass chaos (www.vulture.com). The takeaway: creative vision must be matched by clear leadership and realism. So give your Creative Lead a budget and parameters, then trust them to say yes or no to ideas, artists, and expenditures that affect your festival’s identity.
By explicitly naming who decides in these areas, you also set up a simple escalation path. If a safety issue conflicts with a creative idea (e.g., too many people on a tiny stage), it’s understood safety wins out. If a marketing opportunity pops up (like a sponsor wants a last-minute on-site promo), your Comms lead coordinates with creative and makes sure the messaging and timing align. Small festivals move fast, and team members will inevitably cover for each other at times, but knowing who “owns” each domain minimizes confusion. As a bonus, it can help manage egos – when everyone knows their lane, there’s less chance of stepping on each other’s toes or duplicating work.
Hold Stand-Ups with Actions, Owners, and Deadlines
When your team is lean, communication is your lifeline. One proven technique borrowed from the tech world is the daily stand-up meeting. In festival terms, this means gathering your core team (in person or via video call) for a brief, focused check-in. Keep it very short (10–15 minutes) and centered on actionable items. Each person should quickly answer: What am I working on? What have I completed? Where do I need help or input? Crucially, cap it off with clear action items, assigned owners, and realistic deadlines.
For example, during the crunch week leading up to a small festival, a morning stand-up might reveal that the volunteer coordinator needs more hands for stage setup on Thursday, the marketing lead needs the final schedule by tonight to print flyers, and the site manager is awaiting a permit approval. Instead of these issues lingering, the stand-up ends with decisions like: “Erica will pull 5 volunteers from parking to help stage crew on Thursday (by end of day, she’ll confirm who). Raj will send the final schedule to marketing by 8 PM. Dana will call the city inspector at lunch for a permit update and report back by 3 PM.” Each item has an owner and deadline. The next day, everyone accountable will report progress. This creates a culture of accountability without finger-pointing – it’s just part of the daily rhythm.
Even on event days, a quick stand-up (or “morning briefing”) with your team before gates open can be invaluable. Many festival production teams, large and small, do a daily briefing to align on the day’s schedule, artist changes, safety updates, and any VIPs or media to be aware of. For a boutique festival, you might huddle backstage with your handful of staff and go over who’s covering which stage at what time, when the food trucks are arriving, and who is responsible for the 3 PM workshop event. It sets the tone and lets everyone voice any urgent needs. Issues get solved faster because they’re caught early. Moreover, regular check-ins reduce the chances of something falling through the cracks – if a task was forgotten, it’ll surface when that deadline is missed and can be addressed before it’s too late.
Keep these stand-up meetings efficient by using a simple format or template. Some teams use a whiteboard or shared document visible to all, listing ongoing tasks (“to-do / doing / done” columns, for example). If your festival crew is spread out, use a group chat or project management app to post daily updates if live meetings aren’t feasible. The key is not the format but the consistency: hold these check-ins at a regular time, and make them sacrosanct (even if half the team is running on caffeine and three hours of sleep during show weekend). In a successful small festival in Bali, the core production crew credited their twice-daily stand-ups (morning and mid-afternoon) for keeping everyone synced when a last-minute venue change was forced on them. They tackled the huge logistical shift piece by piece in each huddle – assigning who would move the sound equipment, who would notify vendors, who would update ticket-holders – so that by the time doors opened, every critical item was handled. Frequent, structured communication ensures your lean team operates with the cohesion of a much larger crew.
Document Everything in One Shared Tracker
In the throes of festival planning, especially with a small team, there’s a real temptation to keep plans informal – tossing ideas around in chat, scribbling notes on notepads, or keeping critical info in one person’s head. Resist that urge. Document everything. Maintaining a single, shared tracker for your project is like having a second brain for the festival, one that everyone can access. It can be as simple as a Google Sheet or as sophisticated as a project management software, but the goal is the same: one source of truth for all tasks, timelines, and decisions.
What goes into this tracker? In short: everything important. This means your timeline and production schedule, budget items, artist and vendor contact info, site plan, marketing calendar, ticket sales milestones, staff/volunteer roster, and any open issues or risks. It might sound like a lot, but you can keep it organised with tabs or sections. For example, create a tab for “Operational Tasks” (permits, rentals, logistics), another for “Marketing & Comms” (ticket launches, social media posts, press outreach), another for “Programming” (artist booking status, stage schedules), etc. Within each, list the task, owner, deadline, status, and notes. Color-code or highlight urgent items. This master tracker should be shared with the whole team (read-only for some if necessary) so that at any moment anyone can see the festival’s progress and what’s left to do.
Having everything documented can save you from expensive mistakes. Imagine a scenario: your venue coordinator assumes the operations manager ordered the portable toilets, and the operations manager assumes the venue coordinator did it – a classic communication mix-up. Come festival week, you’d be scrambling (and paying emergency fees) to get toilets on-site. A shared task list avoids this – “Order portable toilets” appears once with an owner next to it, and it’s clear if it’s done or not. Similarly, tracking expenses in one sheet will quickly show if someone is about to double-book a service or overspend. Clarity in planning directly translates to cost savings, because you catch duplication and omissions early. As the saying goes, “measure twice, cut once” – in planning terms, double-check the tracker rather than assuming someone else handled it.
A unified tracker also aids institutional memory. Small festivals often have high turnover in volunteers and staff from year to year (or even within the season). If you document decisions (like “we chose Vendor X for staging because they were cheapest of 3 quotes” or “City requires application filed 60 days out – submitted on Jan 10th”), the next time you or a new team member can quickly get up to speed. The succession planning advice from seasoned organisers is to make your event “plug-and-play” for newcomers – in other words, have a system so that any new team member can quickly understand what’s been done and what’s needed of them. Festival Chair Jon Baker, who runs a 5,000-capacity folk festival in the UK, emphasises having systems so new committee members immediately grasp what’s needed of them and can pick up tasks without a hitch.
Modern tools can make sharing info easier than ever. Use cloud-based documents or services so that all updates occur in real-time, ensuring everyone sees the latest information. Some teams set up shared folders that include not just spreadsheets but also important files like site maps, contracts, and running orders. This way, if someone’s out sick or offline, others aren’t locked out of the info they hold. Transparency is king: it fosters trust internally (no one feels information is siloed) and allows the whole group to work efficiently. Small festivals don’t have the luxury of excess staff or big margins for error – a well-kept tracker is your secret weapon to avoid costly screw-ups.
From Chaos to Clarity: Why It All Matters
It’s worth reiterating why all these organisational measures matter so much when you’re a small outfit. Clarity and communication save money, time, and relationships. Without them, a petite festival team can quickly burn out or blow the budget through sheer confusion. Conversely, a lean team that’s orderly can produce an event that feels far more professional and polished than its size. Attendees will never know that only a handful of people orchestrated the magic – and that’s because you ran things smartly behind the scenes.
Real-world festival lessons show that small events thrive on tight organisation. The team behind one small-town festival in England keeps their core committee just large enough to cover all bases but not so large as to bog down decision-making. They insist on clear role descriptions and even plan for succession (so if one leader steps down, a trained shadow can step up). Their leadership advises newcomers to build a team that’s big enough to handle all tasks, but still small enough that you can have meaningful one-on-one discussions with each member. Another boutique festival in Southeast Asia treats their volunteer crew structure like a mini-corporation – every volunteer knows their supervisor and role, whether it’s handling artist hospitality or managing the eco-recycling station on site. This level of clarity means volunteers are more confident and effective, which is crucial when you rely on them heavily.
On the flip side, consider cautionary tales one more time. The infamous Fyre Festival disaster in the Bahamas is an extreme example, but it underscores how not to run a festival. Beyond the fraudulent marketing, operationally it was a mess: no clear roles, no unified plan (critical tasks like housing and catering fell through), and a culture of last-minute scrambling that ultimately failed spectacularly. Attendees paid the price for that chaos, and so did the organisers. While your small festival is hopefully far more grounded, the same principles apply at any scale: if nobody is clearly in charge of something, it likely won’t get done right. And if you rely on heroic saves every time, you’re courting disaster (or at least burnout).
Instead, lean into being proactive and organised. Make plans, assign responsibility, back each other up, and communicate like your event depends on it – because it does. Clarity is a form of respect: respect for your team’s time and energy, for your community’s trust, and for the artists and audience who expect a great experience. It also has a direct impact on the bottom line. Small festivals usually operate on razor-thin margins; avoiding an avoidable mistake can be the difference between breaking even or going into the red. When everyone knows their job and information flows freely, you won’t be, say, accidentally hiring extra equipment or paying overtime because something wasn’t done on time. Efficiency = savings. As a bonus, many sponsors and grant-givers also notice when an event is professionally run despite limited resources – it boosts credibility and can open doors to future support.
Finally, remember that “lean” doesn’t mean “overstretched.” As a festival producer, you should aim for a team that is as small as possible but no smaller. Cover all critical roles, and don’t skimp on safety or communication. Use technology and outside services to augment your lean team where you can. For example, an all-in-one ticketing platform like Ticket Fairy can reduce workload by automating ticket sales reports, on-site entry management, and even providing marketing insights – freeing your core team to focus on on-the-ground responsibilities. Similarly, simple tools (free or affordable) like Slack for team communication or Trello/Asana for task tracking can act like extra organisational staff members, keeping everyone synchronised. Leverage these, but don’t replace the fundamentals: a tool is only as good as the info you put in and the people using it. So build those habits of clarity first, then add tech for support.
With clear roles, open communication, diligent tracking, and smart use of backups and tools, you can avoid the heroics that drain you and instead run your small festival with calm confidence. It’s a great feeling when a plan comes together – and with these practices, you’ll get to enjoy that feeling more often, even in the high-pressure world of festival production.
Key Takeaways
- Define Roles Early: Draw up a lean org chart listing every key role (e.g. Logistics, Safety, Comms, Creative, Tickets, Volunteer Coordinator). Put names to each role and assign backups. Clarity in “who does what” prevents tasks from slipping through the cracks.
- Assign Decision-Makers: Explicitly empower leads for crucial areas like Safety, Communications, and Creative direction. Everyone should know who has final say in these domains, so decisions are made quickly and responsibly – especially in time-sensitive moments.
- Regular Stand-Up Meetings: Hold short, focused team check-ins (daily if possible) to share updates. Discuss actions, owners, and deadlines for each important task. This keeps the whole team aligned and accountable, heading off problems before they escalate.
- One Shared Tracker: Use a single project tracker or shared document for all planning elements – timeline, tasks, budget, contacts, and more. Keeping everything in one place accessible to the team provides a “single source of truth” and avoids miscommunication or duplicate work. Clarity on paper (or screen) translates to savings in time and money.
- Plan for Backup and Succession: In a small festival team, ensure knowledge isn’t isolated. Cross-train team members or volunteers to cover essential roles in a pinch. Document processes and decisions so new members can get up to speed quickly. A well-documented festival plan means the show can go on even if someone steps away.
- Leverage Tools, Not Heroics: With limited manpower, make the most of technology and partner services. For example, let your ticketing platform (like Ticket Fairy) handle the heavy lifting of ticket sales data, and use communication apps to keep everyone in sync. Work smarter, not harder – clarity and organisation will always beat last-minute heroics.
- Clarity = Efficiency = Cost Savings: Ultimately, being organised and clear in roles is a direct money-saver for a boutique festival. Avoiding mistakes, preventing overstaffing or missed deadlines, and running a tight ship all help protect your thin budget. When everyone knows their job and information flows freely, you can deliver a fantastic festival experience without breaking the bank.
27th September 2025