Verve

Verve is a one-day arts festival organised by each year 2 batch of students in my course. I was asked by my lecturer to write an article on the experience and stuff. Since I’ve already done it, I thought it would be nice to share some parts of it here. I hope no one googles the article and stumbles on this blog and thinks that the article was plagiarised. But I doubt so. Anyway, here goes.

Planning Verve is, by far, the most challenging event that I have ever planned. From conceptualising the theme and coming up with the goals of the festival to contacting artists, raising funds and actually executing the plan was a pretty surreal experience.

I learnt that that patience, perseverance and empathy were crucial in a leader. Advice and ideas should always be considered but at the end of the day, to trust the decision made by the people above us. It may not be the easiest thing to accept, it might even seem stupid, but leaders usually have the best intentions at heart. When things work out differently than expected, dealing with it is much more effective than trying to put the blame somewhere or on someone.

Looking at the list of things we had to accomplish, marketing and outreach was a heavy load for an unexperienced team of 9. Yet, I think we pulled through.

Throughout the journey, getting everything on the list done was not the most difficult thing to do. The biggest challenge was managing a team of 8 and getting everyone to contribute equally while appeasing the public, our superiors, festival sponsors, and our peers. This often meant extremely late nights, addressing lists of complaints and sharing truckloads of encouragement and gratitude. That said, we did not complete everything we wanted to and everyone contributed a different amount of time and effort. Ultimately, when all of us stepped back at the end of the festival to look at the things we have accomplished and the smiles on people’s faces, there was this sense of satisfaction and pride that no one could take away. Those days where we were running on a rapidly depleting sleep bank and those feelings of helpless frustration from the long journey were all worth it.