A little about me...

I say little, but if you know me you know I can chat for England. Buckle up!

Let's throw it way back, (well perhaps not way back to when I was giving my parents performances in the living room) but to when I was prancing around at East 15 Acting School. I realised that my path didn't quite lie with being on the stage, but rather facilitating how others got there. I started my own small theatre company with a goal of helping other creatives who just wanted to create, and not deal with the faff (what I later learned was in fact, producing) that surrounds actually getting a show off of the ground.

Moving quickly through Production Coordinating Southend Fringe Festival to becoming Marketing Director in 2019, then saw the start of my official break into the thing that we call *show business*.

I started as an Assistant Producer at award-winning Veritas Entertainment back in 2019 and enjoyed a glorious 4 years of learning all about booking large scale shows into hundreds of venues UK wide. And that's just the beginning! Making my way through the titles of Head of Bookings & Client Liaison and finishing with Head of Marketing & Operations in 2023, I've established some wonderful connections with many venues in the UK, all whilst navigating the Covid-19 pandemic and shuffling around more shows than I'd care to remember.

However, with securing the CRF Grant on behalf of the company, we were back on our feet and pushing out stellar shows again, and namely selling out The Rat Pack - Swinging' at the Sands at The Adelphi, West End before my time at Veritas came to an end.

I told you this wouldn't be that little...we're nearly there!

Now it brings me to my solo journey, I truly believe that there are so many wonderful shows out there that could do with a bit of help getting their tours going, whether that be intimate studio performances to full blown weeklong music shows. We are all in this business for the love of it; putting beaming smiles on audiences faces, helping to create memories with their pals as they dance in the aisles. If I can play just a little part in that, whether it be booking the tours, marketing the shows, or producing the good stuff, then I'm pretty lucky to call this my job!

But wait, what does a tour booker actually do?

I'd say there's 3 main parts of tour booking, there's many things that make up the below, but just to give you a sense...

Venue relationships

Sometimes the hardest part of getting a tour going is actually speaking with the venue programmers. They are absolutely inundated with requests and they quite simply cannot respond to them all, it's understandable. Having someone who has established relationships, built on trust and track record, and having someone who knows exactly the information that the venues need in order to make a decision is the very first step.

Free tip: aggressively spamming venue programmers inboxes won't get you a reply quicker!

Routing

No one wants to travel from Southampton to Middlesbrough after a 1am get out, do they?

Understanding the logistics of touring is incredibly important to crew moral and producer's bottom lines, among many other things of course! There is a sweet spot within barring clauses between venues and excruciatingly long drives, having someone who understands this even if they're not on the road with you is important.

Negotiation

Believe it or not, there's a fair bit of maths involved with all of this fun!

Knowing what your show breakeven is, what ticket prices you are going in at, all affects what realistic deal you can get. We can get into guarantees, hire fees, box office splits once you know what you need to achieve. If you don't know this, having someone who can guide you based on industry benchmarks will not only make your tour financially sound but you might also be missing some tricks!

Venues have their own overheads too, so the deal needs to work for all parties!

Other tour bookers and promoters may have different methods when it comes to getting dates and that is totally ok, find what works for you and your show deadlines.