7:2 Successful events at any scale

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Lee:
Welcome to the Event Engine podcast. This is your host, Lee. And today we have on the show none other than Dean Rees. Mate, how are you today?

Dean:
Good, Lee. How are you doing?

Lee:
I am doing good, but I'm also enjoying the green of your T-shirt. For those who are listening in on audio, check out on YouTube how good that green is. Is that got a special name?

Dean:
This is the obviously a branded T-shirt of the film, Mowbridge House Estate. The crest and everything It dates back to 1549, believe it or not.

Lee:
Holy smokes. That's amazing. And the green is all part of the brand as well?

Dean:
It is. Yeah, it is. Although, having said that, we are literally in the process of rebranding, so that could all change. That could all It's going to change.

Lee:
Well, guys, if you want to see a historical rendition of the branding, then go and check out this episode. So, Dean, thank you for coming on the show. You've got a fascinating story that has literally taken you around the world. So I don't want to do any spoilers. What we'd love to do is jump in a time machine and just find out first your first experiences of getting into the events industry, and then we'll just use the TARDIS as it were and work our way through to present day. Over to you, mate. Quick introduction as to who you are, and then let's go in that time machine and start wherever you want to start.

Dean:
No worries. Okay, so my name is Dean Reece. As you mentioned, I'm the CEO of the Milton Mowbury Town Estate. I've worked in the events industry now for too many years, to remember.

Lee:
About 20 About probably more than 20.

Dean:
Initially, what happened was I didn't plan to work in events. Like many people, I ended up, especially old-school people out there, I ended up falling into events. But my background training was actually in stage management and theatre production. The first five years of my life, I was working professionally in London Theatres. Then I think around '97, a friend of mine who was working on a show with me started talking to me about doing event work or corporate events. Never really thought about it, never really understood anything about it. That wasn't really my world. But what I realised pretty quickly, this guy was a lighting tech. What I realised fairly quickly was the skills that I had were fairly transferable to the corporate event. Anyway, in time a couple of years, and that became my bread and butter. I was doing fit-ups, one-day fit-ups for events and worked all over, really, as a freelancer. There were no degrees in event management then. It was very much learning on the job, and I did. Started off, say, as a tech, going into venues, helping build the events, do one day fit up the event, and then derig.

Dean:
But as a tech, After that, I started to build relationships with the clients. Some of the venues I worked in, I was working at quite regularly. One of those was the National Maritime Museum in and got to know that team really well. Eventually, they actually offered me some work within the venue. That really became my career, if you like, or the start of my career in events. We're now talking about 2004. Been doing that for a few years, but then decided, Yeah, okay, I'll try this. It seems interesting. I was then looking after the events that the museum were hosting, and that incorporated pretty much everything from private weddings or high-end weddings through to all big corporate events. I stayed with them for, I think, three or four years, maybe even five years, but I was there a while, long enough to understand the basics of planning Eventually, with that, working through suppliers, et cetera, I built up a knowledge and a database as you do, of the people out there you can really rely on.

Lee:
I think as well, just to interject, that I reckon you probably learned more than just the basics in four years, especially with the breadth of events that you were doing, not just weddings to corporate events. Don't be too humble.

Dean:
Wow. Honestly, it was a good learning for me because The Maritime is one of the most prestigious venues in London of any of the major museums. I was fortunate enough to do some really big events. Of course, a lot of our clients were across the water there in Canary Wharf with the big banks and the finance sector. So had some decent clients as well and really enjoyed it. Then the thing that really changed or turned that around was a friend of mine had been out to the Middle East She came back from doing a gig in Dubai and said to me, Oh, you want to go out there? It's fantastic. Unlimited budgets, great events, blah, blah, blah, all of which I'll come to. But basically, I was still at the maritime in 2007, and we could see what was coming up with the credit crunch, with the financial crisis.

Lee:
Yeah, I remember it well.

Dean:
Yeah. Being that our industry sector were very much aligned a lot of our business was very much based around the finance sector and the big banks and the corporates, you could see which way the wind was blowing. I basically then decided I might just look at Dubai and see what it's all about. What happened then was, I think I'd contact an agency in Dubai. That's right. I contacted an agency. Anyway, I flew out there, went out for a meeting, and immediately get to Dubai. It was the land of milk and honey compared to where I just left. It's financial crisis in London, business is drawing up. It was a really difficult time. When I left London, it seemed to be the perfect time. Anyway, long and short was they put me in touch with an agency, with a corporate event agency at the time. I had another meeting with them. A few months down the line, I'd been offered a position. Honestly, it happened so quickly. I I didn't have that much time to think about it. What I can say is when I left London the day I was leaving, I was on the Docklands Light railway and I literally saw some of these poor guys coming out of their offices carrying their possessions.

Dean:
I'd left literally in the middle of that. Anyway, got out to the Middle East, got out to the UAE. As I said, I was working for a corporate event agency then. An interest in me, Dubai is a small place. It's not a huge city. It's not London. At the time when I went there, it was also quite underdeveloped. Although they hosted some really big exhibitions like golf food, Cityscape. These are huge quarter of a million square metre show. The market itself wasn't that developed at the time. I was one of these expats who went out there at a time when it was still booming. I I think that was 2008. I eventually landed, got there, and got set up in Dubai. Completely different culture, different world. It was a real learning experience. Having said that, the thing I loved about it, it was the cutting edge of new business. Where I'd been an account manager in London, dealing with or chasing new business in Dubai, that really was the cutting edge because it was all about growth. The city was expanding, the population was expanding, businesses were popping up all over the place. There were huge events going off.

Dean:
There were lots of new events all the time. For me, it was a really exciting place. I suddenly got to this place where it was sunny, hot. But also there were a lot of other experts working there. I got to know them pretty quickly. You got to know the scene there, the big events, who the decision-makers were, and settled into it fairly quickly because I think you hit the ground running. For me, it was a case of sink or swim. You've just got to learn quickly. That means understanding the culture, but also knowing who the suppliers were, bringing in the right suppliers, who the best partners to be. There's all of those decisions to make in real-time. While I'm doing that, the agency I'm working for is also organising some of the biggest events in the UAE. We did the-Arabian Travel Market? Grape and Travel Market wasn't one of our shows, although I did work on.

Lee:
Oh, wasn't it? Because that was huge. That's one that came to mind. But yeah, carry on. That's a read show.

Dean:
That's not- Oh, right.

Lee:
Okay.

Dean:
I was working for, I'd say, a corporate agency at this time. They had their own exhibition, which I won't mention, but they had their own exhibition, but they also had a lot of corporate clients. I suppose for me, it was a case of just understanding the land, getting to work out in terms of clients. There's a very different process in doing business in the Middle East as doing business here in London. We have email culture here. Everybody writes an email. You plan to meet somebody months in advance sometimes. There, it's very much about face-to-face and getting to meet the decision-makers. That, for me, was also different. It was also- Actually, it sounds terrifying to me because What if I forget something?

Lee:
I like email because everything's all written down.

Dean:
Listen, as I said, you're in the sink or swim situation. At the end of the day, if you can understand that culture and you can see how best to approach your clients within that environment, it actually becomes quite easy, believe it or not. For example, the decision makers will normally meet at the end of the day, at the end of a business day. You never turn up at nine o'clock in the morning for an appointment. You literally drop by. Basically, while they're having, they'll normally be having sheesh and coffee, and you happen to drop by. Essentially, you then get invited into the meeting, and that's where you can really talk to people.

Lee:
There's a benefit there is this faster track as well, isn't there? Because with our email culture that we have, it is very much you send it, you're only really dealing with influencers and parts of the team. And then eventually, that's all going to get communicated up to the top. Who would need to meet it and eventually make a decision, etc. Whereas what you've described sounds completely different and really exciting.

Dean:
It is. It's very different. It's a bit daunting, I guess, when you first, for me it was at least. But once you get your head around that, it actually becomes the norm. You do understand then business etiquette around working in that part of the world. It actually is a very, very important part. If you're going to network there, you've got to build your network very quickly. I made some really good contacts with the UAE government, the Dubai government, and that brought in business for the agency I was working for. I was very lucky, I guess. I ended up working on some enormous events the UAE National Day, the biggest event in the UAE that they hold every year to celebrate the Union of the Emirates. It's a huge event held in a stadium in Abu Dhabi, which obviously is the capital. I got to do a lot of big events, a lot of really Really stuff that if you did in the UK, it would be almost unthinkable.

Lee:
Unless it was the Olympics, I guess. The Olympics, yeah.

Dean:
That's the level. Yeah. It's at the end of the day. It's events are events. I think the processes are the same. You certainly don't have the same level, at that time, at least, there wasn't the the same level of expertise. There was always a bit of edge of deceit when you were doing a live event. I could tell you some funny stories about things that did go wrong. They weren't funny at the time.

Lee:
I was going to say, When you say funny, is that actually the trauma coming through?

Dean:
Yeah, it's probably the trauma.

Lee:
That's how you're dealing with it.

Dean:
We did the launch of a very well-known international defence expo. Let's just give you one example. When I met with the client, I was pitching to the heads of the military, the head of the Navy, the head of the Army, head of the Air Forces. That was quite a surreal experience. You stood in a room surrounded by all these military doing a pitch. But again, very fortunately, the company I was working with, we won that pitch. We actually won the business. It was, I'd say, the opening event of this huge defence When you see it, you had helicopters flying in and all sorts of manner of tanks and all sorts. It wasn't just us, it was a huge team of people that were brought in. But when you saw the scale of it, you just say, Oh, my goodness, what is What? Compared, again, from what I'd done in London, which were mainly corporate dinners, I did other types of events. I did away days, those things, but the scale of it was different is what I'm saying. That was the level at which I which I was working back then, but absolutely loved it.

Dean:
As terrifying as some of those situations, it's also really exciting to be involved in those.

Lee:
Well, I've only arranged a handful of events myself as the sole event organiser where they were my events and people were coming to it and I had to sell tickets and do all of the other stuff. I do remember how stressful that was. We're talking maybe 70 to 80 people in a room. I can't quite fathom how you're able to cope. Is there any lesson you've learned along the way with regards to your team or how to work on these larger scale events where the pressure is quite immense?

Dean:
Yeah, just have good people around you. It's all about the people, isn't it? At the end of the day, we work in an industry that is people-focused. I think certainly with experience, you can work out who those people are that you would rely on, who you can trust in that situation. That in itself gives you a bit of freedom, helps you to relax a bit because you know other people, competent people, capable people are looking after the event with you. Even today, I have a small It's basically a choral concert, a musical performance in our small market town here. The principles are the same. The suppliers that I work with today are tried and tested people that I know and I'm confident that will deliver. Even though it's a different scale, it has exactly the same process. It's just that it doesn't have, I suppose, the profile of those big events. In Dubai, again, another one I did was a hotel launch, a launch for a very prestigious hotel. I suppose the budgets for those things are the other big difference. You've got people that are putting a lot of money into these. That in its own way wraps up pressure on you as the organiser.

Dean:
But I never really got too stressed about it. I did in probably my private moments, but certainly whilst I was working, I always felt pretty confident. I don't know if that's stupidity or naivety, but one of the things going, and I attribute it to my theatre training because I'd studied and they drill it into you about how you present yourself when you're in a professional environment, because in the theatre, you can't have stressed actors going on stage. If you're stressed, you understand? You've got a stage manager is always someone who's trying to be or remain calm, even if the show is falling apart around his ears. But that was something I've always kept in mind, that professionalism within my job and trying to stay relaxed is a big part of what we do because it is It can be a high stress, high pressure situation to be in. For me, I guess that's how I deal with it. But I think also having a good team, as I said, they can relate to that. But you can release some of that pressure because you've got other individuals around you that you can go to understand what you're going through and what the pressures are.

Lee:
It's like that shared ownership, isn't there, as well? I remember my first event, I had no money to do anything other than everything myself. It was all on me. By the second event, having other people involved and being able to go, Okay, sound is on that person over there, and I am not going to worry about it, or touch the sound desk once this event was just such a relief. Again, like I said, small compared to, say, the big budgets, but it's equally as important to the quality and the value of that specific event versus anything else as well. That's great insight.

Dean:
Absolutely. Just a quick story here. With some very well-known brands. I mentioned the finance sector, so I don't need to mention names, but you can imagine some of the banks and the level of events. Sorry, the level of execution they require to make those events successful. But I don't treat a smaller event or of any less value. I see them all as the same. There is a process. You're trying to deliver that to the best of your standard, or sorry, best of your ability, and then I think that has to come from within. That's not something that can be taught necessarily. I think that comes from a passion for doing what you enjoy. For me, it's all about the result for the client or for my team. If it's an event I'm organising, it's all about bringing people together, delivering the best results. You see it across the world, wherever you go. I've worked in Asia, I've worked in the Middle East. There's always that same attitude with events people. You've either got that or you don't. I think that's the defining factor of working in the industry.

Lee:
Absolutely. Now, you have done this for a few years out and decided, I want to come back to the UK. Can you tell us what prompted that? I believe you then became part of the... I think it was the East of England Event Centre?

Dean:
East of England Arena. Arena.

Lee:
I knew it was something.

Dean:
Listen, I should have mentioned that growing up in my early professional career, I was London-based. I never, ever, never worked outside of London. But what happened when I came back from Dubai, I came back for personal reasons, by the way. It wasn't because I wasn't enjoying the work. I loved my life out there, but I had to come back for family reasons. But when I did come back, eventually, it was 2017, so I'd been out there almost 10 years at this point. When I came back, a friend of mine who I'd worked with in the Middle East said to me, Oh, I have a mate in the UK who's looking for a business development director. I was like, Oh, okay. I didn't really think anything of it. Then as time went on, eventually, I met up with this guy, and this guy turned out to be the venue director at the East of England Arena. Never in a million years did I think I'd even be working outside of London, but I ended up in Peterborough, of all places.

Lee:
Of all places. But at least if you ever need a passport, you can just pop down the road.

Dean:
Yeah, true. I actually don't think they're there any longer.

Lee:
Oh, aren't they?

Dean:
Done it. Yeah, I think they closed years ago. Anyway, Peterborough. Imagine I'd come from Dubai and I'm now in Peterborough.

Lee:
This is a contrast. Great cathedral, though, mate.

Dean:
Great cathedral. Yeah, absolutely. But having said that, when I met the venue director, and if you're listening, hello, Jason. When I met the venue director, what I realised was this venue had huge potential, and it really did. It was a showground. It wasn't your traditional indoor corrugated box. It had a lot of potential, this venue. When I met with the venue director, we talked about the business, we talked about how we'd grow the business. For me, that's the exciting part, it's the journey. You get to the events part, but the journey in building the business is also quite a... That process to me is something that gets me up in the morning. Eventually, once I'd met with the venue director, we'd had a lot of conversations about the future and what that looked like, I decided that I'd move. I left London, I went up to, well, Cambridge, here, East Midlands at the time, and then spent the best part of the next five years building their business at the East of England Arena. That in its own way was because we were the underdog when you compare our venue to places like NEC Birmingham, XL London.

Dean:
We were a very, very parochial backquarter, really. Yet with that, we managed to bring in some of the biggest shows in the UK. Some of these shows were huge. I mean, absolutely huge. Plantworks is a plant machinery show that we brought in. Lama was a massive aggregate Agriculture and farming machinery show. All of these events that we brought in really happened quite quickly. We rebranded, straight off the bat. The venue wasn't called East of England Arena. That was the first thing I should mention. At the time, it was called the Peterborough Showground. That name just summed up really the aspiration at that time. The rebrand of our East of England Arena was the... Or the strap line to that was gateway to doing business in the East of England. We did genuinely believe that because there was a lot of untapped potential. The location of the venue itself was north-south on the A1. In terms of geographic location, we were really central to a lot of organisers who were doing shows around the UK. We were very fortunate because I say we picked up some business fairly quickly and that was it. We didn't look back then.

Dean:
We'd go down to trade shows in London, we'd go to the usual trade shows in London. We'd see the other venues there, much bigger venues than us. But we absolutely crushed it at the time. We did that for five years. That's awesome. Absolutely. Absolutely loved it. The way I saw it was we were always punching up. But eventually, I think it was Exhibition News Awards, EN Awards. We entered best venue over 10,000 square metres. We were up against the biggest and best venues in the UK, and we, lo and behold, actually won the award. We won the award. It was a real moment of, We've reached a real point here, and against the odds, because I'll say we were a tiny venue compared to some of our competitors, but I really enjoyed it.

Lee:
Sometimes, though, I can still hear your passion about this. You're clearly still excited about what happened and very proud of it. I can see body language-wise, you're like, you've animated. So people, again, if you're not watching the YouTube channel, go check out this guy is animated and excited. But that's the difference, isn't it? Some of these big venues have huge teams, and a lot of people are just paid to be in a role. So I sometimes think that the motivation for those people to really make a splash tends not to be there because it's more of a job, it's more of a process. There's more red tape, et cetera. Whereas what you're describing sounds like something that's very fluid, it's moving very fast, you can make decisions and test ideas, et cetera, and you all have a passion to go from, Hey, no one's really heard of us, to Hey, we're here. We're on the A1, come and do your event here. You can again see that passion that you were talking about back in the UAE as well.

Dean:
Yeah. To be honest, in that sense, it was very similar to when I landed in Dubai. Because the first thing I had to do was establish who I could bring in very quickly. It was no different at East of England Arena. The first thing was rebrand. Second thing was partners. We looked for the marketing partners to bring in. We wanted obviously production partners, we wanted catering. All of that had to be set up, sorted out, and delivered in fairly quick We did. We managed to get all of these partnerships in place pretty quickly, landed a couple of the bigger events. They came to the city. Once that traction began, we could then go off and talk to potential sponsors or partners within the city. I spoke to most of the hotels then because they realised the increase in footfall to the city would generate business for them. It's almost like that traction, that has its own momentum. Eventually, you reach a point where... We did reach this point fairly quickly. I'll say within 3-5 years, we had really established the venue, the businesses, or sorry, the events which had come to the venue. We were fairly up and running by that point.

Dean:
Unfortunately, things changed very rapidly because the owners of the venue were a charity. They actually owned the assets, the land. They decided they wanted to sell the asset, which, as you can imagine, had a huge impact on the business. At that point, having all really gone through that journey, I thought, for me, probably is now a good time to move on. I decided then, and sadly, that had to happen because I think there were divergent views on the future of the venue. Sure. But I loved it while we were there. The team that we had, we had a great team.

Lee:
Sounds like an incredible time, mate. Yeah, we got a good time. It really does. I feel like I've lived some of it with you. We're now in modern times. There you are, sporting the current brand. Tell us a little bit about what you're up to nowadays, buddy.

Dean:
I should probably explain how I got here and what here is, what that looks like. I actually live in Melton, Mowbray. Even when I was working at the East of England Arena, I was commuting. The organisation I work for now, the Melton, Mowbray Town Estate, is essentially a charity. It's a registered charity, but it has a very, very long history. In fact, dating back to 1549. That's insane. Yeah, it is. It's a bit different, let's say, to working for read exhibitions or working in the Houston England Arena. But what I liked about it is the The assets that the town estate manager, basically, there's a number of properties within the town. There's also a number of green spaces, including the town's parks. When I spoke to them about this particular role, the thing I liked about it was that we both agreed that they wanted to monetize their asset. Straight away, it was, well, events in the parks, in the town. Very quickly, I realised the opportunity to this. It wasn't long then before I started developing a business plan, looking at who we could bring in, partnerships, etc. Now, that was only last year.

Dean:
This all happened in 2024. Roll forward to today, 2025, we've now got all our partners in place. I've got my catering, I've got my bar company, I've got my production company, I've entertainment, talent agencies, all of the ingredients that we need to build the events here. Really, the monetisation of the asset is about supporting the charitable activities. As I mentioned, the East of England were managed by a charity, so I had some experience or knowledge of their role. The Turner States remit, their charities remit, and their function is to put back into the town. The of what we do are the people and residents of Milton. Last year, for example, just to kick things off, I just decided on the spur of the moment, we're going to show the Euro of the England Games on Euro. Remarkably, this had never been done in Melton. No, this was a common thing you see all over the UK, isn't it? Most big cities, we should have a big screen up.

Lee:
Yeah, big screen up.

Dean:
We just did that. I just brought in a I had a supplier that we worked with who bought in a, I think it was a 21 square metre screen, a seven by three metre screen. Pa system, stuck it in the park, and thousands of people turned out. It was amazing. That's amazing.

Lee:
I'm getting the use of it.

Dean:
It was ridiculous. We only started to earn the match, you say, from the quarter finals. The knockout stage was when I decided we're going to do this. It was completely unplanned, really. I didn't think about it prior. I did, but I didn't really think we would do it. I was planning other stuff. In actual fact, it was a bit on the spur of the moment. As it turned out, people turned up in the hundreds of thousands.

Lee:
That's amazing.

Dean:
By the time we got to the final, our park, just to give people an idea, the capacity of our event space, which is a public park called Playclose Park, is only 6,200. We maxed out the number for the final. You can imagine there were people everywhere. It was just a silly- I can imagine. I see your faces. The main reason I wanted that, one was to build a bit of credibility with the townsfolk, to show them that the town of state were doing events and that we were doing these events for the benefit of the town. But also I wanted to get their buy in. Later on, I knew that we would have to do ticketed events, and there was going to be a bit of persuasion to people to start parting with their hard-earned cash. I started off with a couple of free events. We did some movies in the park just throughout the summer season. We did a few smaller events last year. Then towards the end of the year, we also host an annual firework event. Traditionally, the firework event was 5,000 people walk in the park, stand there for 20 minutes, watch the fireworks, and then they walk out again.

Dean:
That was the extent of it. Last Last year, I decided, Right, we're going to change all this up. Let's do something, A, different, but B, in terms of quality, let's try and do something people have never seen before. I decided then we were going to put a full on stage with LED screens We had two headline bands playing. We built the fireworks around a concert, relatively. For the first time, I think the feedback was amazing. We had a load of people, loads of people writing us This is the greatest thing we've seen in mountain, blah, blah, blah. To be honest, it's lovely, and I'm really happy with the response, but it's just building on that momentum now. What I've always said to people is, We do these events for you guys, is, the more you guys support the events that we do, the more we can do, the more we can offer. We're just reaching that tipping point now, I think, where we've done a ticketed event with the firework concert. There was pushback, you can imagine, people people like, Why are we paying? Why we've never paid for this? But now I think the expectation has changed because they saw something of a different level, different quality.

Dean:
Now this year, we've got a load of other events now plotted in. To be fair, last year, I didn't really have the time need to plan stuff. I literally joined and it was hit the ground running, let's do an event, let's show the football. This year, I've been able to plan a lot more, with my team and with our marketing partners to, A, work out what type of events we want to do, and B, how we're going to do those in terms of the programming and the schedule, because not all of them are ticketed. Some are still free events because, as I say, we're a charity. But there are some big ticket items within there. This year we've got four music festivals, three of which are now launched, one more left to launch. We're doing a couple of big weekends of giant inflatables, which doesn't sound very much on paper until you see the size of these.

Lee:
I have a toddler who would go crazy for that.

Dean:
So yeah, all good.

Lee:
I'm there.

Dean:
Literally, the park would just be full of inflatables. We're also doing bands, concerts. We've been doing those now since... Well, they've been running for a while, but we're doing some new ones this year. Those are in the park. We've also got a number of other events, which I want to, again, tie this up to the heritage of the town estate and of Melton, Mowbray, is things like a mayday event. These are free to attend, but very, very different to what I was doing in the corporate world. This is maypoll dancing, interactive workshops, flower garland making, Morris dancing, you name it. It's all that stuff, all the traditional stuff. But in a way, I really like it because it, again, gives something back to people. It also tips our hats to the heritage of the town of State. It's exciting times, but we are very, very busy at the moment.

Lee:
My sister and my brother-in-law live in Milton Mowbray, so I'll be letting them know. I'm sure they already went to the football. He definitely went to the football.

Dean:
I'm sure he did.

Lee:
I'll have to text him after this I'll text him and say, How was it, mate?

Dean:
I think everyone came to the football.

Lee:
I think all of Milton Mowbray was there. But that'd be very excited as well, I'm sure. Also for us, I'm only down the road in Northamptonshire. Milton Mowbray is a really easy place to get for a lot of towns and villages around, you've also got Leicester just up the way there, haven't you? There's an awful lot of towns that would definitely come down to Melton for some good shows, and I'm sure you've got some really exciting plans in the future.

Dean:
I just mentioned a couple of the festivals. We've got a festival called Melton Pop Festival, 21st of June. That is pretty much what the name says on the tin. We've got the UK- What everyone drinking fizzy pop?

Lee:
No, I'm joking. Not quite.

Dean:
The theme of that event is going to be bubbles.

Lee:
I asked the production company, just bring as many bubble machines, as many bubble artists as we can get.

Dean:
But that's obviously aimed squarely families and family with young children. We've got three of the top UK tributes to Billy Eilish, Taylor Swift, and the Ed Sheeran coming to play for that one. That's a day festival. Then 26th of July, something a bit different because I really want to bring more people from outside into Melton, is Melton Scarfest. Most people remember Scar. You're probably too youngly. I'm not, but you are, sadly.

Lee:
I'm 42. My Am I too young?

Dean:
I think you're a bit too young, yeah. But Scar still has an enormous following in the UK, but it's made up of lots... The way I see it is it's made up of lots of small groups spread around the country. They do these things where they'll go to a concert or they'll go to a gig to see their favourite band, but they're not really on a big scale. What I wanted to do is actually bring them all together and do a festival of SCAR for the fans of SCAR2Ti, reggae et cetera. It's a very different thing to what town of State or what I've done before. But actually, again, I brought in partners who knew this scene, who brought the bands to us, who worked with us to create the running list. It's worked well. This year, we've got those two, the Pop Festival, Scar Festival. We're also the Firework Festival, which I mentioned earlier. It's also a concert, and that's happening later in the year. I've got one more which is to be announced, so I won't mention it just yet.

Lee:
So no spoilers here.

Dean:
No spoilers to chat.

Lee:
I think what would be lovely is for us to pop a date in for a year's time and have a catch-up and to see how it's all gone because it sounds like you've got some incredibly exciting plans. If there's one thread I've seen throughout all of... Well, two threads. Number one, I've already highlighted is your passion for this. But secondly, then is that an event, no matter what size or what type of event, needs good people. Again, those people need to want to create an experience for those who are going to be a part of it. I think they would be my biggest takeaways from everything that you shared in this. Have you any last words, buddy, before we say goodbye and then drag you back in a year's time?

Dean:
I would say to you, you should come along to one of the events, and I would suggest come to Scarfest or Mountain Park Fest. Well, I will.

Lee:
My brother-in-law is definitely old enough because he's in his late 50s, so he can tell me all about Scar.

Dean:
Brilliant. All right, listen, it's been good talking to you, Lee.

Lee:
I'm really Thank you so much. All right. What's the best way for people to connect with you before we say goodbye, buddy?

Dean:
I should mention that. Through the website, it's meltonmowbraytownestate.co Or uk through any of our social media channels. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, etc. Or just drop us an email. We're a small team. We're open to anybody who's looking to bring an event here. That's one thing I should mention. Yes, definitely. I think we've got a fantastic facility here. There's a lot going on to develop the infrastructure in the park this year. I've got a couple of organisers who are bringing shows. I should have mentioned them as well. One is a car show. That, I hope, is going to be a popular show. They're looking at around 5,000 attendees, hundreds of classic cars. Fantastic if that works. I hope it does. Then we've got our third-party organisers looking at bringing concerts in this as well. There's a lot going on. It's not just what I'm doing, it's also what other people are bringing. We're open to business. If people want to talk to us, then get in touch. I'd love to talk to them.

Lee:
I'd love anyone who's thinking of using Milton Mowbray who also does 1940s weekends to get in touch because I love those sorts of things. That was a good idea for you. You'd love that one. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for your time. We will see you again soon. Cheerio. Take care.

Dean:
Bye-bye..