Posted by Gill Tee
It’s not a job title we’ve come across anywhere else, but there’s just no other way to describe her: Jean is our Site Mum.
Jean has been working with us since the very first Hop Farm Festival back in 2008. Having her around was such a comfort for us and our crew at that event, that she’s been Site Mum at most of our festivals and large-scale parties ever since.
We call her Site Mum because she’s exactly like a real mum when we’re running an event. Jean looks after everyone, especially all the crew. At any event we’ll have a production team of riggers, scissor-bladers, boom operators and a whole bunch of other people doing jobs you’ve never heard of. They’re all people we know and trust, they’re all excellent at what they do, and for the duration of our event, they are all Jean’s children.
Turn up during preparations for any Entertee event and you’ll find Jean administering tea and slabs of her homemade cake, making sure everyone’s hydrated (summer festivals can mean hot conditions), being a first aider (we get through a lot of plasters) and offering a shoulder to cry on when someone needs her. It’s not unusual to witness Jean standing at the bottom of a 60ft ladder with her hands on her hips, hard techno pumping out over the sound system, telling a huge tattooed gaffer he needs to stop what he’s doing and come down for his lemonade and biscuits. So legendary is Jean’s lemon drizzle cake, that one year during the preparations for the Hop Farm Festival, Kent’s Chief of Police, who fancied himself something of a Paul Hollywood, challenged her to a cake-off. Crew got behind it and held a blind lemon drizzle tasting - needless to say Jean’s cake won.
It might sound a small thing, but we’ve learnt that having someone like Jean - actually, just Jean - around has a huge impact on the success of our events. Treating our crew with the kindness and respect we expect to be treated with ourselves, means we get a happy team who want to do a good job for us. So when there’s a problem, they want to help us put it right, even if it means staying up all night or driving for miles to pick someone up. People tell us time and again how much they love working for Entertee and we think a large part of that is down to Jean.
Gill x