When we went to Splendour Festival in July, we saw former Technical Events student Will Coupland – also part of the former Confetti band Super Furniture – working for Staged UK. We couldn’t resist finding out his journey from Confetti student to technical professional so read on to our interview…
What influenced your decision to choose Confetti to study Technical Events?
I’ve always had a passion for music, be that playing, listening, attending gigs, all of it. During secondary school, I quickly found a love for recording music. This led me to look into Confetti as my next step. I attended an open day and had an interview for what was then the Studio and Live course, now called Audio and Music Technology. From then on I was set on going. Once I arrived I did a few sessions, then Technical Events Course Leader, Darren Harding, came and spoke to the group asking if anyone wanted to switch to the live course, now called Technical Events. I hadn’t considered events work prior to this but I had a look into it and decided yep, I’ll give this a shot.
What are your best memories from studying here?
Some of my best memories of Confetti are the events I got to work on. At the time I’d only ever worked smaller events, then we started getting bigger opportunities and I can remember thinking “wow, this is the real deal.”
To this day, I still miss the adrenaline and excitement of those first few events, nothing compares.
Have you been involved in Splendour as a student?
Unfortunately, I never worked Splendour Festival for Confetti as I was playing on stage with my band Super Furniture. Saying that I knew everyone in my group loved it!
We saw you at Splendour Festival this year, who are you now working for/what is your role?
I work for a staging company called Staged UK. We do work up and down the country for some amazing events. My role is CAD designer – it’s my job to plan and design the stage, for it to be built for our clients. This year’s Confetti stage was designed by an ex-Confetti student!
How did you arrive at your current job after finishing at Confetti?
I actually started working for Staged in the summer holidays between years 1 and 2. There was a training scheme offered through Confetti for a couple of students to go and work for them and learn the ropes with the aim of full-time employment in the future.
What skills did you learn and develop on the course that has helped you in your current role?
One of the main things with events is teamwork…without it, the event will fail. Confetti taught me this through the events we worked – sometimes things would go wrong but we’d pull together and get it sorted. Additional to this there are things like how to be professional, timekeeping, and work ethic.
Our students have just come back from gaining valuable experience at the festival, what advice can you give them for their future aspirations?
I have two pieces of advice:
1. Work hard. Sometimes you’ll feel like you can’t carry on anymore, you’re tired and run down but push. You’ll impress people, they’ll respect you for it and ultimately it will get you where you want to be.
2. Do what you love. We all have to work, that’s the way of the world. And at times it can be hard to get where you want to be but if you’re doing what you love I can promise you it gets a lot easier.
I’d also like to thank the two people who helped me get to where I am today, Darren Harding and James Littlehales, they were behind me all the way through college and pushed me to get where I am today.
If you’d like to follow in Will’s footsteps, check out our Live & Technical Events degree. If you like what you see, book onto one of our future days.
