Table of Contents
I.

A Snapshot of the Outcome

II.

Key Players
a. Meet the Team: Creativo Collective
b. Berklee Support and Involvement
c. Music Action International
d. Universitat Politècnica de València

III.

A Change to Dreams: Evolution of the Project
a. Inspiration: Chance the Rapper
b. US-centric Speaker Lineup
c. Sponsorship Activity
d. Financial and Cultural Reality Hitting
e. A New Approach
f. Local Speakers and Artists
g. Crowdfunding

IV.

Marketing
a. Target Audience
b. Pricing
c. Ticketing Promotions
d. Website and Social Media
e. Physical Marketing

Budget
2

a. Anticipated Budget
b. Actual Budget
VI.

The Outcome
a. Sales
b. Crowdfunding

VII.

Post-Production
a. What Went Well
b. What We Learned
c. Reflective Meeting with Team

VIII.

Conclusion

A Snapshot of the Outcome
A Chance to Dream Music Series was an event with a mission, to highlight the power of

music in supporting the realization of dreams to affect social change. The event was conceived
by Creativo Collective, a Berklee student club whose mission is to create community and
empower musicians through that community. I was the manager of this project, which was a
collaborative effort with the Creativo team. With this event, our goal was to not only promote
something educational and inspirational for the student community in Valencia but to help
others in more dire situations in the world. This is why we chose to use this event to raise
money for Music Action International, which is a non-profit organization that supports survivors
of war-related trauma and stress through music programs.
The event had two distinct but related parts, which included both a motivational
seminar and benefit concert, all on the evening of Friday March 2, 2018, starting at 6:30pm and
continuing until 1am. The first part was a motivational seminar at Universitat Politècnica de
València (UPV) that was an opportunity for attendees to reflect upon their social role as
musicians and how their work and success affects the world. The seminar featured El Chojin, a
prominent Spanish rapper, activist, and motivational speaker. His keynote talk was followed by
supporting speakers, Berklee alumni Erin Corine and Devonte Roach, who are working
musicians in Madrid. The second part was a concert featuring the music of the speakers Erin
Corine and Devonte Roach, supported by current Berklee Valencia artists Casper Jones, Christen
Morrell, and JIM ALXNDR.
The event had many partners and stakeholders, including the group that conceptualized

the event, Creativo Collective, a Berklee student-run club. Berklee was supportive of the effort
by our club and awarded us a Diversity Grant. Creativo Collective worked closely with UPV to
organize the seminar portion of the event. The concert portion followed immediately after the
seminar at Amstel Art (also referred to as Veles e Vents).
While this is what our project looked like at the end, it underwent many changes to get
to this point. Conceptually, the final product was strong, but there were many things I would do
differently if I were to do it again. I learned much about taking the time to do careful financial
planning, leading a team, having realistic expectations, and much more.
II.

Key Players
a. Meet the Team: Creativo Collective

A Chance to Dream Music Series was developed by Creativo Collective, a team of seven Global
Entertainment & Music Business students, including myself. Creativo Collective is an official
Berklee Valencia student club, whose mission is to encourage collaboration between different
segments of the Berklee community, build relationships with the local student community in
Valencia, and empower independent musicianship in the process.
This team was one of the unique assets to A Chance to Dream. The group has a strong
skills base to call upon, including languages, technology, communication skills, and cultural
knowledge. The team members involved were: Kimberly Albritton, Jeheremy Characo, David
Pozuelo, Amisha Patankar, Anna Parry, and Hillary Storm.

Kim was a very proactive and committed member of the team, and she had a clear
understanding of the vision. She came from an artist management and marketing background.
We also had two Spanish speakers who were essential to the project, Jeheremy and David.
Jeheremy negotiated the partnership with UPV and helped me translate most of my
communications with them. David booked our keynote speaker El Chojin, who fitted well with
our mission. We often looked to David as a point of reference for how the local population
would respond to certain aspects of our event, since he is from Spain. Amisha has a background
in social media management and was a great resource whenever I had a social media question.
Anna and Hillary come from live entertainment backgrounds and they helped me with the
venue logistics and the execution of the event.
While each person had a particular type of task they usually worked on, we discussed
decisions as a team and had plenty of minds to bounce ideas off of, which was extremely
beneficial to me in leading this project. My teammates were particularly instrumental in
executing the event itself.
We had all started brainstorming the idea for the event in September 2017 and had
started to look into booking speakers and sourcing sponsorships then. In November 2017, I
decided to take on this project as my CE. My teammate Kim had been spearheading the project
until then, so she had a key role in beginning the project and was essential to the planning
process.
Creativo continues to organize smaller events on and surrounding the Berklee campus,
such as business seminars for non-business students and Open Mic nights at Ubik Café. The

club saw A Chance to Dream as their premiere event and had separate meetings dedicated to
organizing this.
b. Berklee Support and Involvement
In the early stages of the project, Creativo received the Diversity Grant from Berklee, which was
€832 ($1000), to put toward A Chance to Dream. We had worked closely with the Student
Affairs office, and Berklee was a huge supporter of our event. It was through Student Affairs
that we learned about the charity Music Action International, which was a great fit with our
mission, and we decided we would donate any proceeds to them.
c. Music Action International
A Chance to Dream decided to donate any profits generated by our event to Music Action
International, a non-profit organization, originally under the umbrella of Musicians Without
Borders, based in Manchester, United Kingdom. We wanted our project to not only transform
minds locally but to make a global impact by helping people in more dire situations in other
parts of the world. This is why we chose to use this event to raise money for Music Action
International, a non-profit organization that supports survivors of war-related trauma and
stress through music programs. The group of people this charity serves is one of the most
extreme examples of the need to stay hopeful, and this charity recognizes music’s role in
encouraging that feeling. We wanted to work with them because their mission aligns with A
Chance to Dream’s goals to show music’s vast power to inspire people of all ages. What is even
more incredible about this charity is that it works beyond the level of transforming lives and
actually saves lives with their services.

Music Action International saves lives through music programs. They have an unwavering
dedication to helping refugees of war-torn countries begin to rebuild their lives. According to
the UNHCR, there were over 110,000 refugees reported in the UK in mid-2015 and more than
39,000 cases of refugees pending asylum. Many of these refugees were victims of brutal torture
and captivity, barely escaping the life-threatening situations they were enveloped in. Music
Action International uses the power of music to reactivate hope in its participants, many of
whom are refugee children. The mission of this organization is powerful, and we hoped that
would resonate with audiences as well as it did with our team so that we could raise money for
this organization.1
d. Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Creativo was fortunate enough to stumble into a partnership with UPV, when two of the club
members went on a tour of the campus and met Amparo Quilis of the Acción Social office, who
offered the university’s Facultad de Bellas Artes auditorium as a venue for our event. UPV was
interested in collaborating more with Berklee students, and we thought this fitted well with
Creativo’s encouragement of collaboration in the local community. It made sense financially
and conceptually to work with UPV on this project, because they would only charge us for
production, and also we strive to be inclusive and collaborative.
Berklee has a partnership with UPV that is widely underused. Most of the Berklee
Valencia undergraduate population lives in the Galileo Galilei dormitory at UPV, and that is
generally the extent of Berklee students’ relationship with the UPV campus. All Berklee
students have the ability to get a UPV student ID and access their facilities, but few take

For more information on this charity, please visit: https://musicaction.org/.

advantage of this. UPV is such a large, intellectually rich institution, and as A Chance to Dream
was a charity event, we thought this would be a great opportunity to work with UPV’s Acción
Social department. In exchange for their venue, Creativo offered to provide volunteers from our
club whenever UPV needed extra hands, and we delivered on this promise on a couple of
occasions. We only had to pay production costs, which we would have had to pay anywhere.
This partnership was a very lucky accident.

Figure 1. Jeheremy and Carole Ann volunteering at TEDxUPV, pictured with Amparo Quilis of Acción Social

III.

A Change to Dreams: Evolution of the Project
a. Inspiration: Chance the Rapper

The concept of A Chance to Dream was born in September 2017, when Creativo Collective was
formed. We decided we wanted to take on the ambitious task of booking Chance the Rapper
and/or his management. Since its conceptualization, the event’s content and scale has
transformed significantly, but our original inspiration was present in the spirit of the project
throughout the process. Creativo was moved by Chance the Rapper’s large-scale and
9

unconventional success, as an unsigned Grammy-winning artist without a label, and the first
artist to win a Grammy without selling physical copies of his music. This was inspiring to us as
music business students, knowing the complexity of our industry and how difficult it can be to
break through the noise in today’s crowded attention economy. We liked his alternative story
that is contrary to everything we normally learn in school and wanted to create a conversation
around the different ways musicians achieve success and why they choose independent paths.
His story aligns with Creativo’s mission, to empower artists become more business savvy
themselves.
His story was inspiring to us not only because of his success, but how he sees his role as
a successful musician in giving back to his community. In the process of thinking about Chance’s
career, we also considered the idea that social impact is an essential responsibility of a highly
successful artist. Chance’s example as a musician effecting social change is not entirely unique,
but this combined with his independent success was something we wanted to prompt others to
reflect on and achieve in their own path as musicians. Chance has a charity called SocialWorks
in Chicago that aims to empower youth through arts and education, particularly through
music.2 This sparked another question Creativo wanted to explore: what unique quality does
music have to empower people? We wanted our event to be an opportunity to reflect on this
question.
We knew booking Chance would be unlikely, because of his fame and the high costs it
would require to bring him from the US to Spain. We decided that even if Chance and/or his

For more information about SocialWorks, please visit: http://www.socialworkschi.org/.

management were not part of it, we would still do a seminar in the spirit of DIY, education, and
social impact.
When Creativo got together to plan this in September, we began moving in a Chancecentric direction. We had his manager’s contact information and began reaching out. From the
beginning, we knew we would not be able to get Chance to perform, because that would be too
expensive. We were hoping that he or even just his manager would be able to come and do an
educational talk, and have some other speakers as well, in a conference-style event.
b. US-Centric Speaker Lineup
We also considered supporting speakers. Naturally, we began first with our existing network.
Since over half of the Creativo club is from the United States, many of these potential speakers
were in the US. Chance and his manager are also from the US. For consistency and for
convenience of tapping our network, it made sense to bring speakers from the US, but it did not
make sense for the budget. At this point we still had aspirations of raising big money through
sponsorship, and we were not thinking seriously about the budget yet. One member of our
group is an artist manager, and she was going to try to bring her artist J. Buck from the US. He
has experience speaking to and mentoring youths, and his genre is consistent with Chance’s so
we considered him as both a speaker and performer. We also had others that we were
considering. Another member of our club works with an American artist, Justin Michael
Williams, who also is big on motivational content, and speaks about LGBT issues and
overcoming eating disorder struggles. We thought this would add another diverse perspective
to the seminar. There were others in a similar vein we considered, but those were the main
supporting speakers we initially had in mind. It would eventually become apparent that these

speakers were neither relevant to the Valencian audience nor financially feasible. When
booking Chance’s management did not work out, we also began to consider other supporting
speakers who would be more relevant to a Spanish audience.
c. Sponsorship Activity
We were also hopeful about obtaining some large corporate sponsorships. I have a close
contact at Heineken that I was able to get our proposal to, and we were optimistic about that
and securing other corporate sponsorships.
The team had a different set of sponsorship packets that were translated to Spanish,
and we had a list of local and regional businesses to distribute the packets to in person.3 Each
member of the team had sponsorship responsibilities, and we each reached out to about 3 or 4
businesses in the Valencia area before mid-December. We thought going into stores in person
would have the best effect, but it was not easy doing that when, for most of us, the language
barrier was an issue, and so we were not able to distribute our sponsorship decks at great scale.
Our proposal to Heineken was denied, but that was probably for the best since we
learned that it would have been against Berklee policy to have an alcohol sponsor. When
January rolled around and we received no responses, we realized we had to go a different route
to raise funds, through crowdfunding.
d. Financial, Logistical, and Cultural Reality Hitting
We dreamed big in the beginning, but the reality of how little time and money we had
set in pretty quickly. After reaching out to Chance’s manager a few times, Creativo realized that
we would probably not get a response, and we had to abandon the prospect of booking him as

See Appendix A for sponsorship materials.

a speaker. This was in early November. We were still moving forward with the project, because
we thought the concept of the event was strong, and we could have a similar effect with lower
profile speakers. Booking local speakers would also give us the opportunity to make the content
more relevant to a Spanish audience.
Another big part of our plan that did not pan out was receiving large corporate
sponsorships. The thing we did not realize was that the bigger companies had already wrapped
up their sponsorship budgets for the year, and we had bad timing in applying for those in the
fall of 2017. To do an event of this scale of budget, we would have had to start planning well
before the school year started.
e. A New Approach
Besides the logistical and financial problems we had with the original plan of our event, the US
speakers we thought of as an alternative to Chance had no cultural relevance to our Valencian
audience. As a project team, we had to do some soul searching and think of a way we could
make A Chance to Dream both culturally relevant and within budget. By December 2017, it was
clear that we had to make some adjustments. We had to revise the scale of the event to be
something within our budget of 1200€, in a very limited time frame of a couple of months.
The new approach we decided to take was to focus on our local audience, which made
more sense for a couple of reasons. The first reason being the budget, since it is much more
affordable to pay for travel for speakers within Spain. The second, more important reason, is
that it could be relevant to more people, including UPV and the Valencian community. The
Berklee audience would become a secondary demographic, though Berklee was still very
important to the event’s identity.

f. Local Speakers and Artists
Instead of Chance the Rapper, we decided to book El Chojin as our keynote speaker. He
is a rapper from Madrid, who is also an activist and motivational speaker. He has had a prolific
recording career, particularly in the 2000s when he released seven albums. In 2009, he broke
the Guinness World Record for most syllables rapped in a minute with 852 syllables in 42.2
seconds with a total of 921 syllables in 1 minute. His musical style is distinguished by lightning
quick rhymes packed with social commentary on issues such as gender violence and
immigration. We thought he would be perfect for the mission of our event, in that he speaks
about social responsibility in the music industry in a motivational way, so we thought his
content fit well with the mission of A Chance to Dream. It was also important to us to feature
an artist who is native to Spain, who is relevant to a Spanish audience. He is well-known in the
older millennial age demographic and has a decent social media following with almost a million
likes on Facebook, so we anticipated that his participation in the seminar would boost ticket
sales.
We also decided to invite two independent artists based in Madrid, who happen to be
Berklee Alumni, to speak about their experiences as working musicians. The first was Devonte,
an artist and entrepreneur from the Global Entertainment and Music Business class of 2017,
who often posts motivational content on his artist page. He talked about changing direction
several times in life, including during his time at Berklee and the personal struggles he
overcame to accomplish what he wanted to from the experience.
Erin Corine also came from Madrid. She is a Berklee Valencia alumna of Contemporary
Performance program’s class of 2017. She currently runs an artist space in Madrid. She spoke

about her love for Spanish, and how this part of her and her mixed race affect her artistic
identity. She spoke a lot about her journey as an artist and as a professional, which flowed well
with the content from El Chojin and Devonte.
I also thought Devonte and Erin Corine were interesting speakers because they are
Americans who decided to continue working in Spain after Berklee and have been able to find
their individual paths to success. An underlying theme of the event is a cross-collaboration
between Anglo-American and Spanish cultures, and these alumni are great examples of people
who have succeeded in embracing this culture change. The final speaker lineup included El
Chojin, Devonte, and Erin Corine, and these speakers all contributed something different to the
inspiring conversation we were trying to create.
Erin Corine and Devonte would also perform later that night at Amstel Art. Both had
different styles. Devonte’s genre is hip-hop and Erin Corine’s is a blend of Latin-American and
soul. We added some current Berklee artists to support our two main artists. These were
Casper Jones, Christen Morrell, and JIM ALXNDR. JIM ALXNDR played first. He is an electronic
musician who incorporates saxophone in to his performances, and he also DJ’d between sets.
He was followed by Christen Morrell, who is a singer-songwriter who plays in an acoustic-pop
style. Then Casper Jones, who is equally rapper and singer-songwriter, played before Devonte
and Erin Corine. Overall, the lineup was cohesive and the performances were engaging
throughout.
*Another change to the speaker lineup: One other thing I wanted to note was that we
were planning was to bring an organizer from Music Action International and one of the
organization’s students from the UK to speak and perform. This was sometime between when

we were focused on bringing people from the US and revising the lineup to be more Spanish or
European.
We really wanted to bring them to represent their organization, but booking travel for
them was difficult, as they were not able to give us their travel information in a timely manner.
We were not even sure that the student they intended to bring would be able to get into Spain,
since his asylum application was still processing. The longer the organization took us to give us
their travel information, the less financially feasible it was for us to book flights for them.
Also, it was a couple of weeks before the event, and they were now asking to be paid a
fee for speaking in addition to travel and lodging expenses, in addition to the money we were
trying to raise for them. When we originally talked to them about coming, we had only agreed
to pay for travel and lodging. This new fee appearing out of thin air was the deciding factor in
canceling their participation in the event, because there was no way it was financially feasible
for our group, and it frankly was an opportunistic request on their part.
Though we could no longer bring representatives of Music Action to the event, we still
believed in the organization’s mission and wanted to donate the proceeds to them. We
proposed that it would be mutually beneficial for us to continue to have their organization as
the recipient of any proceeds we had without their participation, as their expenses and fees
would severely dilute any profits we would have to donate to them.
g. Crowdfunding
By the time January arrived, the team realized that securing any significant sponsorship
was unrealistic. We decided to take an alternative approach to funding the project by setting up
a GoFundMe. This was set up in January, and originally the text was worded in a way that

stated that donations would be put toward the project, which is a non-profit operation through
which all proceeds would go to Music Action International. Shortly after I created the page, I
changed the language to target people who would not be able to attend the event due to
location or other commitments, but who still wanted to donate to the cause.4
IV.

Marketing
a. Target Audience

Originally, the event was going to be entirely in English, because we were curating the speaker
lineup with Berklee and English-speaking expats in mind. After we shifted the focus to be more
local, our main audience was UPV students. Berklee and expats became secondary audiences.
Our target audience was mostly university students but we knew we had to target UPV and
Berklee students differently.
The seminar in particular was targeted toward UPV. This is why we organized it so El
Chojin, our Spanish-speaking keynote, would talk first, before the English portion with Devonte
and Erin Corine. We focused a lot on physical and word-of-mouth marketing at UPV for the
seminar.
The concert after the seminar was more Berklee-oriented, because we were able to
book Berklee artists for free, in addition to Devonte and Erin Corine who performed as well.
Amstel Art is a venue regularly used by Berklee, so we figured the Berklee community would
come out in bigger numbers for this than the seminar portion, which they did.
b. Pricing

See Appendix B for GoFundMe images.

Originally, our ticket price was set at 15€, as a bundled ticket price for both the seminar
and concert. Our group thought that was reasonable for the two parts. However, I began
thinking that might be high, and it certainly was for Valencia. We kept the general price at 15€
but provided discounts to UPV and Berklee students, who were our target audiences anyway.
We offered tickets to UPV students at 10€ and Berklee students at 12€. Our rationale for that
was since UPV was offering their venue for free and helping us with promotion and volunteers,
we would give their students a bigger discount.
Buying the ticket to both the seminar and concert was a bargain, since we decided to
sell separate tickets to the concert at 7€. Judging by the audience turnout, people were much
more willing to pay 7€ for one thing than 10€ or 12€ for two things. In hindsight, I probably
should have had one price for the whole thing at 7€.
c. Ticketing Promotions
To sell advance tickets, we decided to do a promotion in which people who bought
tickets before February 28 would be entered into a raffle for prizes. These prizes were two gift
cards, one to Pull & Bear and one to Lush. We had 4 entrants into this raffle and gave away two
prizes. In hindsight, that promotion may not have been so helpful. It did not entice enough
people to buy early, though if we were able to promote sooner, this may have been an effective
way to secure ticket sales.
d. Website and Social Media
We bought a website domain, achancetodream.com, to house information
about the event and the ticket link for attendees to register. The website had a professional
design and format, but it was not complete until we confirmed all of our speakers and artists.

While it was bare of any concrete information, we had to take the website down for a couple of
weeks for maintenance. I edited the copy, which had not been changed since we decided not to
bring any speakers from the US, so that it was relevant to the new direction of the seminar. We
were also then able to feature the speaker lineup, location of the concert, and a link to the
GoFundMe page.5
We had been doing soft promotion through social media since November, but we really
had no call-to-action for a lot of these posts. It was just planting a seed of awareness of the
event online. We used Facebook and Twitter for this.6 Facebook is especially difficult for
nonprofits or independent organizers to use to get the word out without paid posts. We were
not looking to do paid posts until closer to the event, so there was really no point in posting on
Facebook until then. The approach to social media we took was that each member of the team
would be responsible for doing one post a week on an assigned day. This worked out since
there were seven of us, one for each day of the week. The rationale for this was that if we each
took one day, it would not be too big of a commitment, and we would all post about different
things which would make for diverse content. It may have been more consistent to have one
person doing this, but no one on our team was able to devote time to that role at that point.
We also had a Facebook event, that was in both English and Spanish.7 This is the post we
chose to boost the most. We made an additional event for the concert, just to cover all the
bases. One issue I noticed with promoting this event, is that there was too much information in
the main Facebook event that some people did not even know there was a concert by looking

See Appendix C for images of achancetodream.com.
See Appendix D for Facebook page images and Appendix E for Twitter images.
7
See Appendix F for images of Facebook event.
6

at it, or that it was included in the seminar ticket. By making it a separate event, it simplified it a
bit, but ultimately I think the event itself should have been simplified more.
I tried to make the social media tasks easy for everyone by creating a content calendar
to outline what each person was supposed to post about on that day with relevant links and
media to do so. We had a shared folder in the Google drive from which everyone could access
our logos and content, though sometimes there was content that was not under my control
which was missing. This is an issue I will expand upon in section VII.b.: “What We Learned.”
e. Physical Marketing
Like all other Berklee events, we flyered around campus. This poster was in English, and
we had a separate poster and flyers that we distributed to UPV, in Spanish.8 The UPV poster
focused on El Chojin, because he was our star attraction and this audience was much more
likely to know of him than Berklee. In the weeks leading up to the seminar, my team and myself
went out to UPV several times to canvas and promote through word-of-mouth. The first thing
we did was get involved with Acción Social’s event prior to A Chance to Dream, which was
TEDxUPV. Jeheremy and I worked with the volunteers to prepare that event, by filling gift bags
and moving production equipment. Jeheremy was helpful in facilitating communication
between me and the volunteers, because my Spanish is limited and the volunteers had limited
English for the most part. The volunteers were a great resource for having people on-campus to
promote and spread the word. We gave each of them some flyers to hang in their dorms and
pass around.

See Appendix G for event flyers in English and Spanish.

We had to go back to UPV to flyer more though. One barrier is that we were not allowed
to flyer without permission, so Acción Social suggested we leave flyering to them. We did flyer
around the campus in non-official places like telephone poles and bus stops, and even left some
smaller flyers in some of the restaurants surrounding campus. It is such a huge campus, and we
were able to cover quite a bit of ground, but it did not have the impact we wanted with having
so little time.
My Spanish-speaking teammates were the most helpful with this part of the process,
since they were able to approach students on campus, tell them what the event was about, and
answer any questions they had.
What I would have done differently with this part comes down to time and volume. If I
had confirmed the lineup sooner, I would have been able to start promoting at UPV a month
out instead of two weeks out, and I think that could have made a difference in the UPV student
body turnout to the event.

Budget
a. Anticipated Budget

The anticipated budget looked much more balanced than the actual budget, due to some
unforeseen costs, as well as an inaccurate calculation of the grant money we were awarded,
which we over counted by 50€.

PLANNED COSTS

FUNDS

Promotional Costs

Diversity Grant

€879.00

Stickers

€20.00

Creativo (Fall & Spring)

€200.00

Facebook

€25.00

Bake Sales

€147.00

Total

Speakers
El Chojin

€430.00

UPV Production

€181.50

Venue Costs
Veles e Vents

€180.00

€1,226.00

Estimated Revenue
Av. ticket price: 12.50
Seminar Tickets Sold
Total

Bad

Good

Best

150

270

€625.00

€1,875.00

€3,375.00

Speaker Transport/Lodging
Trains (3)

€350.00

Hotels (1)

€60.00

Taxis (6)

€20.00
Figure 2. Budget with Estimated Revenue

Total:

€1,266.50

b. Actual Costs
The actual budget after everything was paid put the project into the red. Although I thought I
had accounted for each cost, there were hidden costs I did not know would accumulate:
SALES
cash sales

€118.00

Eventbrite

€159.51

FUNDING
diversity grant

€832.00

creativo club funds

€200.00

bake sales

€147.00

GROSS SALES + FUNDING

€1,456.51

EXPENSES
speaker and performer fees

€530.00

transportation and lodging

€410.00

UPV production

€199.00

Amstel Art production

€308.55

food for artists, volunteers - both venues

€97.90

marketing

€60.00

signage and event Supplies

€87.00

TOTAL EXPENSES

-€1,692.45

profit after expenses
Figure 3. Accounting Sheet

-€235.94

Band Payment
One of our performers had agreed to play for free, understanding that our event was for
charity. What the artist failed to mention was that her band needed to be paid. The first time

this was brought up was a week before the event. This should have been mentioned up front
when she agreed to perform for free. They asked to be paid €180 but we reached a
compromise of €100, which was added to the “speaker and performer fees.” Honestly, this
would not have been a big deal if it were discussed up front, because we could have planned
for it.
Production
Production was a higher cost than expected. This was due to several underestimations I made
and inexperience. Production at Amstel Art went over because we ended up having to rent a
bass amplifier from the venue for 75€, since the Berklee Equipment Room did not have one
available for off-campus rental. Also, there was an IVA tax of 21% added, which was not
included in the quoted price. I did not think we would be taxed, because in the US, there is no
tax for non-profit or charity events. Berklee is a non-profit institution and does not have to pay
tax in the US. That was a difference in the tax system I did not anticipate, that cost an additional
53,55€. Production at UPV also went over budget slightly (by 18€), since we ended the seminar
about 30 minutes later than planned. In total, the production costs went over budget by
146,55€ or 40.5%.
Food for Speakers and Artists
This was an incidental cost that I should have included from the beginning, I simply forgot to
include it. I felt like we had to at least provide pizza for speakers and performers, especially if
they were providing their services for free or at a discounted cost. We had refreshments for the
groups at both venues, both the seminar and concert which added up to 97.90€. We had a lot

of acts, so this added up to a fairly high cost but was reasonable for the number of people we
fed.
VI.

The Outcome
a. Sales

The seminar drew a small crowd. We sold about 20 tickets to the seminar, and provided some
free tickets to administration. We were able to sell more tickets at a lower price to the concert
later on. All the door sales were in cash, but I have data about the audience that purchased
through Eventbrite based on the discount code they used.9
At the end, these were our sales:
Door sales

118€

Eventbrite

159.51€

Total

277.51€

GoFundMe donations

€235.00

TOTAL FUNDS RAISED

€235.00

Figure 5. Crowdfunding (went to Music Action)

Figure 4. Sales Revenue

We had hoped for at least 500€ in sales, to be able to give a decent amount to Music Action
International and cover any incidental expenses we incurred. Unfortunately, there were several
incidental costs we incurred over the course of the event and the sales did not fully offset the
costs. We were able to give some money to Music Action International through the
crowdfunding, though there were issues with that as well, which I will explain in the following
section.
b. Crowdfunding

See Appendix H for Eventbrite data.

When the team decided to create a crowdfunding campaign associated with this event, it was
thought of as an alternative to sponsorship, which was not a feasible method of funding this
particular event. It was also thought of as something that targeted non-local people who want
to support the cause, being the event and/or what it was raising money for, which was Music
Action International.
I had originally created this campaign on GoFundMe with copy that read like the
campaign was to raise money for the event, from which any proceeds would go to Music Action
International. It was essentially like buying a ticket. This made sense for targeting people like
family and friends of the team, and it did make sense for the most part, because one of our only
two donations was from family.
But as we thought about it, the campaign needed a more urgent call to action to
persuade a larger demographic of people to donate. So, then the copy was changed to read like
a donation to the campaign was a donation to Music Action International. That was the goal
after all, to raise money for this nonprofit doing great work.
What happened was that a family member of one of the team members donated 185€
to the GoFundMe, which they told us they wanted to go toward ticket sales. And we gave away
the tickets that they bought with their donation. It was just a mistake that this donation went
to GoFundMe, and I should have told them to buy tickets through Eventbrite instead.
When I explained this to Music Action International, they did not understand why the
money was allocated that way and actually accused me of fraud. I was advised that as long as
the donor was in agreement with how their money was allocated, that it was ethical to put it

toward the event costs, but I should have known that this could potentially cause conflict and
should have been clearer about the purpose of the GoFundMe.
While I did not agree that what I did was fraud, I ended up giving Music Action
International the full amount raised from the GoFundMe campaign, which was 235€. The only
two donations were one of 185€ (donated by the family member) and another 50€ donation,
and we were always going to at least give them the latter donation. It was not a ridiculous
amount of money, and it was only the difference between almost breaking even and being out
money. I knew I had to take responsibility for my mistake and I did and was happy with the
outcome, because I was giving the money to a charity that helps people.
VII.

Post-Production Evaluation
a. What Went Well

The strength of this event is that the content was cohesive and powerful. Every speaker and
musical act was solid and fit with the theme and feel of the event. Each speaker brought a
unique perspective and experience to share. The Spanish speakers in the audience really
enjoyed El Chojin, and he talked about a subject matter that is rarely talked about in Spain,
which is being black in Spain. Some of the Berklee administration I invited came up to me after
and told me that they had never heard a talk on that topic in all the years they have lived in
Spain, which made it clear to me that the content of this event had some level of relevance. The
topics seemed to flow well from El Chojin’s talk to Devonte and Erin Corine’s segments. The
concert flowed equally well, if not better. Each act sounded great and there was a crowd of 3040 people. People were enjoying the concert and many stayed until the end.
b. What We Learned

Do Not Underestimate the Importance of Location Accessibility
The main weaknesses of A Chance to Dream were logistical things. The first one was the
location of the seminar. Though I had visited the Facultad de Bellas Artes at UPV before, I did
not realize how difficult it was to find, since I had always come with someone who knew the
campus. I also underestimated how far it was from the main road that the buses come to and
how that factored into people getting there. It is at least a 5-8 minute walk from the bus stop,
and even when you reach the right area, the entrance to the auditorium is not obvious.
If I were to do this at the same place in the future, I would put a very detailed map of
the entrance and its relation to the campus on the website. I would also have brought more
signage and had volunteers stand on the pathway from the main road and direct attendees.
As nice as this venue is, I would recommend students doing similar events to choose a
venue that is more centrally located in the city. Though Facultad de Bellas Artes is a beautiful
auditorium, and UPV was very generous in donating it to us for the evening, it is a very
inconvenient location for most people, which was probably a factor in low attendance.
Time Is Not on Your Side
Time was something our team did not have a lot of, both from the moment we started planning
the event and during the event itself. The timeline of our project did not allow for the
substantial changes it underwent throughout, and we were too optimistic about how much
content and production we could pack into one evening.
We began planning the event in the middle of September 2017, and we visualized it a
lot differently than the way it turned out in March 2018. If everything had gone according to
plan, five full months may have been enough time. This was not the case and it rarely is. By the

time we decided not to bring any speakers from the US, it was January. Then, we did not
confirm El Chojin as the keynote speaker until February. We also were not able to confirm the
concert venue at Amstel Art until early February. We did not want to promote the event until
we had complete information, so we only had about two weeks to heavily promote. This was
not enough, especially given the challenging location of the venue, which would require more
advance planning for attendees.
It also took a long time to get El Chojin to post about the event on his page. He did not
add it to his tour dates until two days before the event. His post had gotten several likes and
comments, and we believe that post was what prompted a few people from the general public
to buy tickets. We may have been able to sell more to the general public if his post had gone up
earlier.
All of the last-minute promotion stems from the fact that we had confirmed all the
speakers and venues much later than we wanted. If things were confirmed earlier on the
timeline, we would have had more time to promote through our own efforts and through our
lineup’s fan bases.
Confirming Amstel Art late also made it difficult to coordinate with the artists to submit
their tech riders. One artist did not submit their rider until the day before, despite my team
hounding them for it multiple times, and that caused me to have some very difficult
interactions with the venue. If I was able to confirm this venue sooner, I may have had more
time to get organized with tech riders and had an easier time working with the venue. I also
may not have had to pay to rent a bass amp from them, but that also comes down to an artist’s
level of professionalism, which is out of my control.

I Cannot Be in Two Places at Once
The event schedule demanded me to literally be in two places at once, which is obviously not
possible. We largely underestimated how much programming we were planning to fit into one
night. When planning the seminar, it seemed only natural to follow it up with a concert. Since
the seminar was about music, it did not seem like it would be a complete event without a live
music component. I really enjoyed this part of the event, but I wish I had spaced out the timing
between the seminar and the concert, instead of having one almost immediately after the
other. In hindsight, I should have either made the seminar an earlier, daytime activity or moved
the concert to the next day.
I also underestimated how much I would be needed in both locations at one time. I
came to set up and supervise the seminar with one half of my team and put the other half of
my team in charge of supervising the sound check and making the artists comfortable at Amstel
Art. While I was in the seminar, making sure everything was running smoothly there, I was also
getting frantic text messages about issues arising with the sound check at Amstel Art. My team
was annoyed at me for not answering quickly enough, but what really needed to happen was
that I should have been at that venue too. I set myself up to need to be in two places at once
and that is clearly impossible. I made it to Amstel Art by the concert start time, but I would have
liked to have supervised at least part of the sound check as well.
Technology Is Out to Get You
Despite my taking extra precautions to make the technology run smoothly during the seminar, I
had a technical difficulty during Devonte’s talk. I downloaded the videos he was using from
YouTube so I did not have to rely on the internet, but something else went wrong. I am not

used to operating a Windows computer, which is what UPV had for us to work with. I tested it,
and it was fine when I tested it. What happened is we played music during the intermission and
whoever turned the music off just muted the volume on the computer and did not turn the
music off. The video was muted and it took us forever to figure out what was going on. This was
why I wanted to be in charge of the slides, but someone got into the computer without my
seeing to turn off the music. I should not have let anyone who is not me touch the computer,
because I certainly would have made sure the music was off.
Be in Charge of Your Own Event
I was the team leader of this event, but it was complicated because I did not lead it from the
beginning. One of my teammates originally came up with the concept and formed the team,
and I took on a leadership role later on as a co-project manager. I became the leader of the
project when I decided to continue producing the event but shift the focus on the local
audience, though my teammate continued working closely with me.
This shift in leadership was difficult due to the short time in which it happened and also
since not all of the assets were passed to me. There were pieces of content that I did not have
access to, and this slowed my work process a lot. For example, my teammate was the only one
that had access to editing the website. This was because it was under her own paid account,
and I had to ask her to edit the information if there was a change, which is always an extra step
that takes longer than if I could just do it myself.
Also, she was the person who started the conversations about our event with Berklee
staff, some of the performing artists, and Music Action International. She continued to be the
point of contact for some of these people out of convenience, which I thought was helpful. In

hindsight, as the leader of the project I would have preferred to be able to answer questions
about any given thing that was happening with the project, but sometimes I had to go through
an extra step of asking my teammate. The communication channels between all the
stakeholders of the event were not incredibly clear, though this is also due to the large scale of
it and its various moving parts.
It would definitely have helped if I were in charge of the project from start to finish, or
even further, if there were clearly defined roles for each team member. The team talked about
this in our post-production meeting. Even though we all wanted to do a little bit of everything,
it would have been more productive to define roles so everyone knew what they were
responsible for throughout the project.
In Spain, You Need to Speak Spanish
One thing that is perhaps underemphasized at Berklee is how important it is to be able to
communicate in Spanish if you are trying to do anything with the local community in Valencia. If
you do not speak Spanish, you need someone on your team who does. I was lucky enough to
have two Spanish speakers on my team, which was incredibly helpful when communicating
with UPV staff, venues, and our keynote speaker El Chojin.
While I was able to work fine with help from my Spanish-speaking teammates, I felt bad
that these extra translating responsibilities fell on them. Though they said they do not mind
translating, I felt guilty about it because my project was not the only one that required this kind
of attention from them, because the majority of the Global Entertainment and Music Business
program (and probably the majority of the Berklee Valencia student body in general) does not

even speak intermediate Spanish, and so we are constantly asking one of the four or five
Spanish-speaking students in our class to translate copy for our events.
The importance of speaking the language in Spain should be obvious, but I think it is
something that people should consider when attending Berklee Valencia and the scope of what
they can accomplish here. My event went well despite my having a language barrier, but it was
not without significant help from my friends. It took a little longer to communicate, and there
may have been some miscommunications at times, but it was a hurdle the team overcame.
c. Reflective Post-Production Meeting with the Team
After the event, the Creativo team had a meeting to talk about how we thought it went. The
general consensus is that it went as well as it could have given the circumstances, such as the
location, limited amount of time to promote, and weather.
There were some internal disagreements among team members about who was
responsible for what, and each person had a different idea of how much work they were
expected to do on the day of the event. We all agreed that each of us should have been clear
about how much work we wanted to do. This was also the first big CE event any of our group
had participated in at Berklee. Being inexperienced, we did not decide ahead of time who
would take the instruments back to the Equipment Room or what roles everyone had during
the concert. I thought the group I sent to help with the sound check would decide roles among
themselves and decide what they would each do then, but I perhaps should have assigned one
person from that group to a leadership role. In the future, I would be able to assign specific
roles, since I know exactly what work needs to be done. This may not have been necessary if I
was able to be at both the seminar and concert venue, which is why next time I would space

out the two parts of this event. This would have been very difficult for me to do the first time
around, since it was the first iteration of this event.
VIII.

Conclusion

Though the outcome of A Chance to Dream was not as impressive as I had hoped it would be, I
could not have asked for a more valuable learning experience. We had started with a really big
idea, which was motivating at first but crippling when the reality of what we could reasonably
pull off hit us. This was a massive undertaking in an area where most of our team barely spoke
the language and where none of us really knew the market, and I feel like we accomplished a
great deal despite some considerable setbacks.
Another valuable outcome of this CE is that I have a better idea of what direction I want
my career to take. I know this is partially due to inexperience, but I also learned that I do not
feel comfortable or happy running an event of this scale. I learned that it gives me a lot of
anxiety, and not the type I am willing to deal with as a sacrifice for the positive outcomes of the
work. I am glad I know how to organize an event like this now, so I can help others with their
events, but I do not think I want to oversee something like this again. If I did, I would want it to
be my own modest enterprise that I would prototype and improve incrementally from the
ground up and not hurl into existence like a potato in space.
In addition to what I mentioned in VII.b: “What We Learned,” the most valuable lessons
are what I learned about people, the quality of work they do, and who and what organizations I
would choose to work with in the future as a result of this project. This project had a lot of
stakeholders involved and managing those relationships was a valuable experience from which I
think I was able to understand a lot of different personality types. Had I done a less complicated

event, I may not have understood this much about how I work with others at this point in my
career, and I am happy to have picked a project that challenged me and pushed me to grow.

Appendix
Appendix A: Sponsorship
1. Digital Sponsorship Deck (Page Order: Left to Right)

2. Physical Sponsorship Brochure (Folded – Outside and Inside View)

Appendix B: Crowdfunding Campaign (Final Version)

Appendix C: Website

Appendix D: Facebook Page

Appendix E: Twitter

Appendix F: Facebook Event

1. Poster with Spanish Copy

Appendix G: Posters

2. Poster with English Copy (for Berklee)

Appendix H: Eventbrite Payouts and Discount Codes Used (Online Sales Only)

Discount Code/Type of Admission
Regular
Berklee Student (3€ discount)
UPV Student (5€ discount)

Tickets Sold
5
2
9