Event planning evaluation: The Chingay Parade

1. Event Introduction & Background

We would like to do a detailed report that based on our findings on event planning and event evaluation process of an event. The event we have chosen is Chingay Parade. The Chingay Parade was firstly introduced in Johor Bahru in 2006 and it is a street parade event also a part of the celebration of Chinese New Year. The parade stretches go as far as 15km throughout the city of Johor Bahru, about 145 groups usually lasts from mid-afternoon to after midnight with an organized row of lion dances, interesting performances including dancing, singing, decorated parade floats and so on.

First, we would like to explain why the event is called ‘chingay’. Chingay has two characters; Chin and Gay is the Min Nan dialect (including Teochew) for the Art of Decorating. The deities as Chingay Parade have rarely reffered to Johor Bahru residents as annual parade. This name is mostly used by the non-Chinese speaking public; probably due to the non-religious fancy parades in Penang and later in Singapore. Although the decorated floats and painted Chinese folk-characters are part and parcel of this annual parade, the main theme actually is the procession of the Five Deities from the five main dialect-groups of Johor Bahru. Thus for a Johor Bahru resident, especially the Chinese-educated, this annual parade is always pronounced ‘You-Shen’, which meaning the Parade of the Gods in Mandarin, rather than Chingay.

As the historical of Chingay Johor Bahru, the Chingay Parade has been held for more than 100 years. It is celebrated on the 21^st day in the first month of the Chinese Moon-related calendar and the event attracts thousands of people every year also as part of the Moon-related New Year celebration and as a predictor of peace and richness for the coming year for the town. Besides, Chingay started as a birthday celebration of Chinese gods, whose statues were taken out of temples and paraded around the city. In the belief that they will then provide plenty blessings to the people. Johor’s Chingay has heavy religious importance, where all parades begin at the Old Chinese Temple in Jalan Trus (Johor Bahru). Chingay procession was held in celebration with the birthdays of the Chinese deities or the procession of the Goddess of Mercy (Guanyin). It was held to worship and enjoy with the deity.

Today, the JB Old Temple has five main deities for the five main dialect-groups: ‘Yuan Tian Shang Di’ or ‘Tua Lau Ya’ for the Teochews, ‘Hong Xian Da Di’ for the Hokkiens, ‘Gan Tian Da Di’ for the Hakkas, ‘Hua Guang Da Di’ for the Cantonese and ‘Zhao Da Yuan Shuai’ for the Hainanese.

On the 21^st day at about 7 in the evening is the grand parade, all the devotees and those with designated tee-shirts of the respective associations will then enter the Deities’ Depot to lift their respective deities for the night parade. This will be accompanied by troupes of opera characters, musical bands, lion-dancers, dragon dancers, decorated floats, stilt-walkers, big-headed dolls, giant flags and many other groups to entertain the town-folks who by then will line along the entire route eagerly awaiting the deities to pass.

The order of the procession is always predetermined. The first deity to lead the parade will be Zhao Da Yuan Shuai of the Hainanese clan, followed by Hua Guang Da Di of the Cantonese clan, then Gan Tian Da Di of the Hakka clan, Hong Xian Da Di of the Hokkien clan nd the last to round up the back is the main deity Yuan Tian Shang Di of the Teochew clan.

2. Event Planning (Definition)

In general, event planning is the process of managing a project such as a meeting, convention, birthday party, exhibition, conference and so on. Event planning includes money-planning, beginning and building on timelines, selecting and reserving the event sites, buying permits, planning food, coordinating transportation, developing a theme, arranging for activities, selecting speakers and keynotes, arranging for equipment and facilities, managing risk, and developing backup plans.

As event planner, event planning means consists of coordinating every detail of meetings and conventions, from the speakers and meeting location to arranging for printed materials and visual equipment. Besides, Event planning begins with figuring out the goal that the sponsoring organization wants to accomplish. Planners choose speakers, entertainment, and content, and arrange the program to present the organization’s information in the most effective way.

In addition to that, event planning is the energizing art of planning people and activities in order to create a show that creates memories of a lifetime. Designing and producing an event, whether it’s a meeting, related to big business event, fund-raiser, tradeshow or any other event, is in many ways almost the same as directing a live stage performance.

3. Event Planning (Important)

Event planning can help event planner to know what is the contribution should be and how to achieve event purpose. It is an important point to make sure that the event will be successful. It also can help planner to identify their event goals clearly and make planner decide clearly and concretely what the event need to do and can affect the social that organization wants.

Event planning also can help planner make sure that understand their goal and what they need to do to reach event goal by involving target consumer in the event planning process. It can make planners all work in a goal-oriented way more than in a loose way where planner just respond to issues and cries with not clear event goals as well.

Besides, event planning can helps planner to accountable for what they do. It is a consequential point, event planning can help planner or organization decide what is the best to use resources including hired people, equipment, time and other, so that will help planner and organization most significant contribution to achieving their purpose.

Last but not least, event planning important in lays the basis for event organization to asses and evaluate their achievements effectively.

4. Event Evaluation (Definition)

In general, event evaluation is analysis of the efficiency and efficacy of such events using a range of empirical methods. Event evaluation measures investigate impact at all levels. In apart from that, event evaluation is the process of critically observing, measuring and monitoring the implementation of an event in order to evaluate its results (Bowdin, 2008).

5. Event Evaluation (Important)

Event evaluation, as well as event planning cycle, it can help event organization and event planner to identify how they can improve and correct what they are achieving, event organization and planners also can take action to build on successes event and repeating failures in next time event.

Besides, effective event evaluation process enables event organization and event planner to use what they learned from their experience to improve what they are achieving in the event.

In addition to that, event evaluation is necessary to make event planner and team-mate more efficiency and effectively before the next time you organize an event. It is all about finding the mistakes and learning from them.

In apart from that, evaluating help event planner gets feedback from attendees and participants, discovering the best and worst bits of an event to know if the event achieved its original aims, or how it could be improved for the next event.

Moreover, evaluating shows volunteers and staff the value of their work and the impact of the event on the community. Some funders may require evaluations to be conducted, to show value for money as well.

6. Event Planning Process

Objective, visitor, place

Chingay is a cultural Chinese New Year festival, so that the visitor of the event will be Chinese. Location of the Chingay Event held in Johor. Through history, after World War II, this activity spread to the south of Peninsular Malaysia unconsciously, that is Johor Bahru. Johor Bahru Chingay is commonly known as “Chinese New Year celebration part 2”. There are a folk saying on Johor Bahru people that “Chinese New Year never come to end if no celebrate Johor Bahru Chingay”. In addition, since the Chinese living in Johor majority. This annual event is inextricably linked to the Old Temple at Jalan Trus.to organizes Johor Bahru Chingay Celebration with five Chinese dialect groups also called as Parade of Deities. Based on the size of the number, this event plan in outdoor so that can accommodate more participants.

Time, date, content

The Chingay is conducted in the first lunar month from 18th to 22nd (5days). And which consecutive 3 days from 19th to 21st are running with the main activities. In the morning, when the gong decorated with sacred flag bearer of the team will be deemed to walk and jingle of the gong in the entire parade route, this represents to “wash the way” before the festivities begin. On the first day on 17 February 2014, here is a light up ceremony at Xing Gong. It is a provisional places that deities choose. It can provide more spacious place to believers to pray. For the second and the third day, there is a street cleansing and mounting of deities on holy sedans followed by a small drum music parade and deities leaving the Old Temple carried on holy sedans. The location is from Johor Old Temple to palace. Thereby completing the centuries Chingay for three consecutive days of Overture. On the fourth day, activity held in the evening at 7pm. It is a busy streets walk of Johor Bahru from Xing Gong and walk around the Xing Gong. The distance of the line is about 8 kilometer. The town-folks are accompanied by decorated floats, lion-dancers, troupes of opera characters and so on. Lastly, 22nd February is the day of deities return to their Divine abodes, after this Johor Bahru resident will feel that they had finished their New Year.

Promotion+ Sponsorship

All the source of communication have been use. The organizer, Tiong Hua associations started to promote Chingay. As Chingay is an on-going parade, it has its own website. Besides this they also create a Facebook page welcoming for people to join. In the page, they listed out all details and the history of Chingay. For those who have questions, they also willing to give answers and the information will be update on time. In the other hand, the organizer promote the event through newspaper. Meanwhile, there will be banners and posters at anywhere in Johor. In addition, There also have media conference helped them publicise. For people who may not be able to see any information on others way, TV stations are another alternative for people to get Chingay information. Chingay is a recurrent activities, so not too much publicity, people will get to know about it. Based on the relationship between people, word of mouth also became a tool of mass media. In this event, people who participating were dressed in several different styles and different signs of T-shirt which are provided by the supplier that are Carlsberg, Tiger and Country Garden Danga Bay. Thus, the vendors can use this event to advertise their products.

Accessibility

Due to the wide range of activities involved, the number of participants more, even at night parade, it is easily lead to the accidents. In order to avoid the occurrence of such outside bruised and protect the safety of participants, the organizer had invite the medical staff to assist. The organizer also prepared a resting place for the participants.

7. Event Evaluation

Chingay parade event is a successful event in Johor Bahru, Malaysia due to it has a lot of foreign and Chinese people will join in this festival event every year. In this festival event, it affect a lot of benefits impacts as well as the cost.

In benefits, social and cultural impacts in this event including broaden people’s horizons because it has the festive atmosphere with stilt walkers, lion and dragon dances, acrobats, and dozens of decorated floats taking to the streets amidst the clashing of cymbals and beating of gongs and drums in this event. In this current issue, planner also try advantage a lot of new technology element inside this event so it will attract teenager joining this event.

Another benefits in social and cultural impacts are revitalising traditions. Due to this event is a traditional festival event, it can promote our traditional culture inheritance to next generation as well.

In addition to that, this event can increase Malaysian pride as well because have a lot of foreign know this event and it can let foreign know about our traditional culture.

The positive political impacts in this festival event are this event can let our social cohesion. This event purpose is unity ‘Teochew’, ‘Hokkien’, ‘Cantonese’, ‘Hakka’ and ‘Hainan’ all of these Chinese people during 19th century. In this current, also can let other race people know about Chinese religion so it will increase Malaysian cohesion in the country, because everyone will respect different race religion.

This event also will attract foreign tourists come to join in. It can increases tourists visit or travel in Malaysia so that we can earn and increase a lot of foreign money.

On the contrary, this festival event also bring negative impacts in environmental which make a lot of environmental damage and pollution in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Due to the reason which people are going for a 15km around Johor Bahru, the participants will throw rubbish at the street and make noise. Besides, it will disturb residents around the city until midnight and this event increase traffic jam as well.

In the political negative impacts, event organizer cannot calculate their budget in this event. Their budget come from donation and find a lot of sponsorship. If the year has financial crisis, they will get the donation less than last year and let the event lead to failure because they need a lot of money to be the cash float.

Last but not least, it has a political negative impacts which are lack of accountability. Event organizer cannot predict the accountable of the amount of people who will join in the event and will make event organizer easily loss control of the event.

8. Recommendation

Evaluations often make recommendations about how a program can be improved, how the risk of program failure can be reduced or whether a program should continue. Based on the environmental negative impacts as environmental damage and noise disturbance, we can increase participant awareness about the knowledge of 3Rs which including reduce, reuse and recycle and everyone has responsibility to make sure the environment is clean. As traffic jam problem, we can encourage participant to achieve a sharing car plan with others or taking the public bus instead of taking private car. Chingay Johor Bahru can solve the noise disturbance problem by considering to plan the event not ended until mid-night for next year.

Furthermore, due to the political negative impacts which are lack of accountability, the event organizer can do a survey form on social media first, understanding total how many people will participate the event before organizing and planning the event.

Last but not least, the event organizer should planning the financial report first before finding a sponsorship to record how much they need to spent to control their budget.

9. REFERENCE LIST

1. What is event planning? Available from: <http://institute-of-event-management.com/what-is-event-planning>

2. Event planning. Available from:<http://www.etu.org.za/toolbox/docs/building/webplan1.html>

3. Johor Bahru Chingay. Available from:<http://johorkaki.blogspot.com/2014/02/johor-bahru-chingay-2104-johor-kaki.html>

4. Johor Bahru Chingay. Available from:<http://festivalsandevent.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-joyful-celebration-chingay-parade-2012.html>