Ahead of the Hanwell Hootie main event on the 9th of May, there were 2 warm up sessions today. One was for the volunteers, to brief them ahead of the big day and the second was a Youth Stage, giving a show case to bands from the Terry Marshall Academy. Both were taking place in the Hobbayne Centre and GoodGym were on hand to set up the main hall for the 2 different events.

Cool Runnings

Essential for the Youth Stage was to have a working bar and essential for a successful bar was to have ice. There was no ice, so Iram went on a supermarket run with a Hobbayne member. They stocked up the freezer and the beer buckets, ensuring that perfectly chilled drinks would be served to the gig goers.

Centre Stage

Kash, Steph and Sevan were tasked with setting out seats for the volunteers. they had to guesstimate where the stage, bar and walkways would be. The stage was the biggest problem. One of the organisers imagined where the drummer, guitarists would be positioned and where the singer would stand centre stage. The first row of seats was positioned around that, with the team setting out the chairs in semi-circles, so that it would feel like a mini theatre.

Setting a High Bar

With the bar drinks chilling on ice, someone tall had to put the BAR sign up to attract the punters. As the tallest person on site, Steph took on the job, stretching high to place the sign out of reach of any flying beer glasses.

Voluntees Table

At the other end of the hall, Iram was helping to line up the t-shirts for volunteers. They each had names stuck to them and were grouped by size. It was a great system, except that the tables were way too small for the number of volunteers and t-shirts. That meant that Iram had to organise and shuffle the groups a lot. The GoodGymers made Iram's task a little bit easier by taking their own tees home, freeing up precious space.

Banner Manner

The final task for Kash, Steph and Sevan was to get the freshly delivered banners for the Terry Marshall Academy displayed inside and outside the hall. There were a lot of cable ties available. They still needed to work out how to use them creatively to show off the banners in the best way possible battling to get the hanging without folds or overlaps. Speaker brackets, dumbbells and railings were all called into action to make sure the signs stayed up and stayed visible, with the end result looking pretty professional and not at all put together by a bunch of (talented) amateurs.

Back In Black

After all of the fun today, GoodGym will be back after dark to tidy up again. They'll be removing all signs of the sensible volunteers and wild rock and roll that took place in the hall today.