Cardiff School of Management>Staff Profiles>Neil Marcus

Neil Marcus

Lecturer In Events Management

Department: Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management

Office/Location: 1.57E, Ogmore Building, Cardiff School of Management, Llandaff Campus

Telephone: +44 (0)29 2041 6324

Staff Overview

Neil’s career began in 1979 working as a stage manager working for many ground-breaking fringe theatre companies, specialising in work for contemporary dance having work for Sadlers Wells, Ballet Rambert and London contemporary dance. During this time, he worked with the leading dance companies from around the world and was on the road touring with many major household name bands throughout Europe.

Neil started lecturing back in 1986 and this will be his 36-year lecturing alongside this he has maintained a busy career in event management, consultancy and safety management working closely with many local authorities as they developed their events programs. During this time, he was also the Production manager /Technical Director of many significant outdoor events with audiences ranging from 500 – 500,000 people.

Neil is highly involved in the worlds of both education and events and maintains connections with the industry and is proud to maintain this overlap in both worlds.

In 1998 Neil set up Red Man Events, an event management partnership specialising in large-scale events for a wide variety of clients. Neil has been responsible for the production management and safety management on many concert sites involving wide range of Chart bands and to A list stadium acts as well as some of the leading festivals and sporting events throughout the UK. On top of this his work frequently involves large-scale corporate events throughout Europe and beyond.

Teaching

Module Leader for:

Venue Logistics and Operations
Event Safety and Licensing
Major Incident and Crisis Management

Contributor on:

Event Design and Production
Conferences, Exhibitions and Corporate Events
Event Project Management
Festivals and Cultural Events
Legal Issues for Events

Research

Neil’s research involves working within the industry with some of the leading event providers in all capacities and working closely with local authorities and government organisations to ensure the best and safest events are delivered, and from these experiences works all of this into his teaching and education, and where possible takes students out into the field to see how the industry works, leaving a long legacy of past students gaining employment from these opportunities.

Neil considers himself to be the “least academic, academic!” and has a very much hands-on approach and practical orientation to his teaching presenting the realities of the industries and the benefits, rewards and opportunities to the students who make that commitment to the industry.

Key Publications

Other Projects and activities

During lockdown and the continued issues are related to the pandemic I’m pleased to have been involved in many of the events returning.

I know these times have been trying and testing for many, but I’ve been privileged to be part of the comeback having been involved in some very exciting projects I’m very much of the mindset let’s make the comeback greater than the setback.

We kicked things off with pre-match activities at the autumn internationals in the principality stadium.

Then into developing 5 boutique Camping sites around the UK for The Pop-Up Hotel and Champneys group of hotels.

At the tail end of May was proud to be part of BBC 2 Coldplay project from Whitby Abbey working is the site manager. This led immediately into an exciting new project which involved six weeks on site in London as site production manager and healthy safety officer which involved a complex build on a Brownfield site just off Brick Lane for ground-breaking installation that will be in place for 12 months https://www.chaoskarts.com . State of the art technology creating an immersive go-karting experience.

This leading to the rebirth of the festival season which kicked off with a brand-new festival called Gateways that took place in Skipton which was a great success Then on to Production managed / stage-managed three events on his behalf for music and sport at Newbury and York racecourses.

Then provided Production management support at this year’s Reading festival.

In and amongst this has been peppered with Red Man providing health and safety services on concerts in Cardiff Castle and Swansea Singleton Park for the Depot Live events One of the special little projects that I was involved in was the Manic Street Preachers concert that was filmed in Cardiff Saint David’s hall for BBC Radio 2, being a fan of the band for many years and knowing the team at Saint David’s Hall very well and having an opportunity to work with the same BBC team we did the Coldplay project with was an absolute pleasure.