BRANCH Event using Gibbs Framework for Reflection
Describe in detail the event you are reflecting on.
The event was held in the Goodwood Restaurant at Chichester
College - it was a charity event, held in aid of BRANCH, a local charity, with
a live murder mystery performance. I was there to run the event on the day and
had organised it as well, with another classmate. We were also supported by
three BTEC students.
The event was fully booked, with 41 guests who were a mix
of my friends and family, regulars to the restaurant and others who had seen
our event advertised. In addition to these guests, our classmates were working
on the day, each given specific job roles ranging from table service, hot plate
and selling raffle tickets and cards.
The performance and food service worked around each other. A
course was served and then a section of the murder mystery was performed and
this continued until the end. Guests got a chance to interact with the actors,
to ask questions and try and solve the mystery - we had three winners in the
end. My role was managing the event, alongside my classmate, and dealing with
any issues that occurred.
There were 8 waiters, 1 bar person, 2 selling raffle
tickets, 1 selling cards, 2 people on the hotplate and 2 who worked with the
actors.
All of the guests enjoyed themselves and we raised over £500
for BRANCH, which is fantastic.
Feelings and Thoughts (Self awareness)
- How you
were feeling when the event started?
In the morning I felt stress and anxiety and sick with
nerves.
By the time guests started to arrive, I felt relief that things had
finally come together and excitement to see everything coming together.
- What you
were thinking about at the time? How did it make you feel?
Due to horrendous traffic, I arrived later than expected and
despite informing the team that I was going to be late, when I arrived they
hadn't done anything to prepare for the day.
Before I had arrived, I was
already feeling stressed because I was late and mentally, did not feel
organised as a result.
These feelings only increased because the rest of the
team hadn't done anything while waiting for me and then we had staff missing
for various reasons and coming in late, which also increased the levels of
stress and anxiety I felt.
- How did
other people make you feel?
The fact that my team hadn't done anything to prepare made
me feel very angry - they had all the information necessary and supposedly knew
what they were doing so I felt they had no excuse.
I also felt that if for some
reason I hadn't been able to come in, then the event would have been a failure
because they couldn't anything without me there.
My classmates made me feel like all of my hard work and my
event was unimportant to them and that it was all worthless. Despite asking
that they contact one of us personally if they were going to be absent or late
for any reason, only three out of the class did so. Two were absent for the
whole day but only one of them contacted me while several people arrived later
than 9am, possibly confusing it with other events which started at 9.15am.
But
there were three that really bothered me - two of the class who hadn't done
their event yet were working on their kitman order (which they'd left to the
last minute) but rather than come and tell me themselves, they sent a third
person who then informed me she would be going to help them with it. I made it
clear that this wasn't acceptable and I needed her to stay in the restaurant
with the rest of us.
This made me feel really angry, because I had helped out at
all of the other events, staying to help set them up, helping bring in supplies
and props and giving it my all and now that it was my event, I expected the
same and I wasn't given that.
- How did
you feel about the outcome of the event?
At the end of the day, I just felt drained. It had been
challenging and there had been some issues but despite this, the customers had
enjoyed themselves although the team working had mixed feelings about it.
I
wasn't happy to hear my lecturer slate everything - she'd been very openly
negative about the event all day and I do feel that this impacted the teams
thoughts, as well as my own.
I went home feeling incredibly negative, angry and
upset instead of feeling proud about what I had achieved and happy with my
efforts, which is how I had hoped I'd be going home.
- What do
you think about it now?
The event was challenging and busy but it was different to
everyone else's events and from the customer's
perspective, it was enjoyable and successful - we raised over £500 in
total for the charity.
Evaluation
Good:
The food was really well received by guests, with everyone
rating it either excellent or good on our feedback forms.
The Murder Mystery itself was also really good - all guests really enjoyed it and it was
great to be able to walk around the room and see them all getting involved and
discussing the mystery.
We had acquired a large selection of raffle prizes, which
was excellent and they attracted great interest. In addition, we had wrapped
them up to look like gifts so that they fitted with the murder mystery and gave
the added twist of not knowing what was underneath. Although this sounded like
fun, I am not certain that it worked as well in practice and it is probably not
something I would try again.
Bad:
Despite doing the best we could, we had issues with
microphones on the day as half of the supply we had were not the right sort,
took up lots of space and only picked up words spoken within a short distance
away from the microphone. We weren't able to use the other half, which were
lapels, because there was no space left. This meant that guests towards the
back of room were unable to hear what was going on the whole time.
Due to a number of catering students not showing up on the
day, there were delays in food service, which was noticeable as we were serving
all guests at the same time. There was nothing we could do to correct this.
Conclusion and Action Plan:
To manage the delays in food service, we had to revise the
service plan and start the performance up again before all guests received
their main courses, when the delay was longest. Although this wasn't ideal, it
gave guests something else to focus on. We later needed to make up for lost
time and served tea and coffee as soon as desserts were served.
Our customer feedback forms indicate that the raffle took
too long to get through and upon reflection, we never actually discussed how we
would do the raffle. For the next event, I shall make sure that this is
something that gets done at a pre-briefing.
The biggest feedback received from staff was about communication
between myself and Cam. One example given to me was that during set up the
night before, we'd decided against arranging the centrepieces until the
following morning, in order to keep the flowers fresh. However, the next day,
after I asked two members of staff to help me arrange them and went to get the
items needed, Cam told them that the centrepieces weren't being done because
they had to stay in the fridge! Talk about confusing. As for communication
between myself and Cam, I will admit it should have been a lot better but it
has been incredibly difficult to get through to her and by the time the day
arrived, I had simply had enough.
Upon reflection, something else I probably should have
considered was abandoning the idea of organising a Murder Mystery after having
so much trouble sourcing microphones – I feel I should have given myself a maximum
of 6 weeks (which would have brought me to the end of the first semester) and
then accepted I would have to change the event. This is something I will bear
in mind for any future events I organise.
I have learnt so much from organising this event - from how
much work goes into planning them, from the big to the small details (which are
most definitely equally important), to how important good communication is. I
think working on an event where you know communication isn't great only
empathises's that but I did my best to work with Cam.
I have learnt about
thinking of things who wouldn't normally consider, such as the microphones and
music to play in the gaps - not once did it occur to me to bring in a CD to
play while the performance was on break, which might have given a better
ambience. Some things I know I can improve on for next time is not to fret and
worry so much about things and for my second year event I hope to able to let
go every now and then, rather than live and breathe my event every second.
Overall, I set up to host a successful event that was
challenging, enjoyable and different to everyone else's. I think this was
certainly achieved and I am very pleased with what I produced in the end.
Gibbs model incorporates all the core skills of reflection.
Arguably it is focused on reflection on action, but with practice it could be
used to focus on reflection in and before action.
