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Plan it well 1) General considerations

Points to take into account

Rutherford Festival IES Valga CC BY NC SA

Here are some things to consider when beginning to plan the festival. On the next page you will have help with organising yourselves and sharing the work out. 

1) How many of you are taking part? In some schools more than one class may have done this project during these months and so you will need to coordinate yourselves well to do the festival together.  

2) Make sure you have got the collaboration of enough teachers to help you. Ask your music teacher about this. 

3) Who is your audience going to be? You will need to find out from your music teacher and from the teacher who is in charge of activities in your school whether this will be for some other classes or for the whole school, and whether maybe you will do a performance for your parents and guardians, too. 

4) Linked to point number 3 is this: where are you going to do the festival? Have you got a school hall? Or maybe you have a local hall or auditorium that you think you may be able to book. In any case, you will have you to plan the dates and book it. You will also need to book a slot for a dress rehearsal. (More about this later).

When you know how many people will be attending the festival and where you are going to hold it, you can calculate if you will need to do various performances or just one. And then you can book the day(s) and the hours in your school activities timetable or in the local hall or auditórium, if that is the case. 

Preparation of the presentations

PREPARE THE PRESENTATIONS FOR THE FESTIVAL

This means the presentations of each piece of work or powerpoint that you are going to include, but also the presentation at the beginning of the festival, welcoming your audience, and at the end of the festival, thanking them for coming and for their support. 

- In some festivals there are programmes printed out for the audience with the list of perfomances and the names of the students taking part in each one. These can also include, perhaps, a short summary of each part of the festival. 

- In other festivals the students present themselves when it's their turn.

- In others, there are one or more presenters who come in between each act to introduce it and tell the audience the names of those performing next. 

Whatever method you decide on, you need to think about getting a good balance between showing off your English (which you must!) and making sure the audience understands everything. You could have a translation of what has been said in English read into Galician or Spanish for the audience, or maybe you could prepare simple posters summing up what has been said in some of the shorter introductions. 

It's up to you, but make sure everything you all say can be understood by everybody!