EC PAPERS NOVEMBER 2017

8

Liberating Arts committing to spending another £7500 on hotel bills when a decision had not yet been made about whether the event was actually taking place. Once the decision to move to a 1-day event was made on Mon 16 th Oct a revised and much reduced hotel list was sent to Red Met on Tuesday 17 th and they were asked to confirm that these rooms were now booked. They did not confirm these new bookings to us and later that week I called to Anthony to confirm the bookings. He seemed unsure what I was talking about but assured me the bookings were confirmed. On the Tuesday before Liberating Arts Red Meet informed us that Jury’s Inn had cancelled all our bookings and the only place they could secure the rate of £65 per person per night was at the Holiday Inn Express at the M5 Service Station at J29… 8 miles from the venue. This was clearly unacceptable as most of the participants were travelling by train and a taxi journey from the venue or train station to the hotel would cost £30 each way i.e. another £60 per person per day, making the cost of rooms over £125 per person per night. As a result of this the Producer spent most of the week prior to the event booking and negotiating hotel rooms. This added to workload and stress and contributed to some details not being picked up that had to be managed on the day. Anthony Cleckner from Red Meet is a pleasant man to deal with and Red Meet cannot be blamed for the email that was sent telling them the event was cancelled. However, the email came from someone who had no responsibility for Liberating Arts and much stress and expenditure could have been avoided if Anthony had checked with the Producer or Gen Sec before cancelling the bookings. It is also true that Red Meet reacted very defensively once the initial error had been made and did not help resolve the problem in a useful way. The Holiday Inn booking was clearly unacceptable and Red Meet were asked to come up with a different solution but did not. Exeter University: Exeter University initially promised a great deal in terms of in-kind support for Liberating Arts. However, it soon became clear that in return they, and

8 Producer’s Report 06/11/2017