Based in Cardiff, St. David’s Hall is Wales’ national concert hall. And Yesplan is proud to provide this staple of the Welsh cultural playing field with a sturdy event planning backbone. Discover how they manage to organise an array of events, from classical concerts to pop shows, powered by our event planning solution.
2023 marks St. David’s Hall 40th birthday. Over these years, the concert hall has become renowned for its incredible acoustics. The concert hall was included in the world’s Top Ten concert halls for acoustics in the Journal of Acoustical Society of America. This positions the venue ideally for recording and broadcasting live classical concerts, as the BBC regularly does.
The main concert hall can accommodate just under 2000 attendees at full capacity. Guiding us through the venue’s story is Assistant Programme Manager Joanne John, who has been working at the venue for over 16 years now.
Before Yesplan was introduced, St. David’s Hall used an outdated system with a limited number of licences. “Only so many people could be logged in at the same time. Whenever you wanted to edit information about an event, you had to write it down, call a colleague on the other side of the building, ask them to log off and only then log in yourself to make the edits,” Joanne says.
However, Yesplan allows an unlimited amount of licences, so the choice to switch was quickly made.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Joanne set up Yesplan together with her husband, who also works for St. David’s Hall. “It became a sort of family project actually. Amid lockdown, we both worked from home, trying to set up the ideal event planning system catering to the venue’s needs,” Joanne recalls.
She and her husband carefully implemented Yesplan step-by-step. After which they introduced it to the rest of the team incrementally. First came the Programming Team, after that the department heads and then it was rolled out to the rest of the colleagues.
“The Programming Team quickly started using Yesplan to manage cancellations during the lockdowns. The colour-coded calendar view was immensely helpful in distinguishing rescheduled and cancelled events,” Joanne tells us.
Are you also looking for an event planning solution that understands the needs of the live entertainment industry? Yesplan provides a tailor fit, fully customisable solution made by people who ‘get it’.