The Problem
You can teach budgeting with a worksheet, promotion with a poster template, and customer service with role play — and none of it survives contact with a real queue of real people. The learning that matters only appears when the event is real and the deadline cannot move.
The problem: how do you structure a genuine public event so that every stage of it is learnable, assessable and safe — without draining the reality out of it?
Context
MarbleFest was a community event built around marble runs and games, open to the public, and delivered end-to-end as a learning project. [setting details to be supplied by Jo]
Constraints
Immovable deadline. The date was public; the work had to be done.
Real money. Actual budgets, actual suppliers, actual takings.
Every learner a role. Jobs matched to abilities without inventing fake ones.
Public event. Safety, insurance and logistics for real attendees.
Design Strategy
I designed the project structure and managed the event: breaking the event into learnable roles, sequencing the build-up, and holding the project management spine so learners could safely hold everything else.
Design Process
The event was decomposed backwards from opening day into workstreams — programme, venue, promotion, finance, hosting — each with roles at multiple levels of demand, so every learner did a real job at their level.
Weekly cycles ran like a production meeting: progress, blockers, next steps. Evidence for qualifications was captured from the work itself as it happened. [process detail to be supplied by Jo]
The Solution
MarbleFest ran as a real public event, delivered by learners in genuine roles from planning through to hosting the day itself. The project structure — not the staff — carried the differentiation, and the deadline supplied the purpose.
"The date on the poster was the best behaviour plan we ever wrote."
Impact
The event was delivered to a real audience, and the preparation generated naturally occurring evidence across several qualification areas. [outcomes to be confirmed by Jo]
Design Artefacts
Looking Ahead
MarbleFest confirmed that project management is a teachable structure, not a personality trait. Given a real deadline and a role that matters, learners rose to it — the design work was making sure the scaffolding was invisible on the day. [Jo's own reflection to replace this draft]