From assisting clients and making gifts to understanding the steps to create a private event; junior Sidney Tishgart was able to work in the private event industry at ACL Live to gain experience, allowing her to solidify the fact that she wanted to pursue a career in the music industry.

“This is something that not a lot of people can say they have the opportunity to do and I really appreciate that I have it,” Tishgart said. “It’s just leading me to further pursue my enjoyment and love for music, which is honestly just awesome.”

Over the summer, Tishgart had an opening to get an internship in planning and organizing behind the scenes of private events where her mother, Teel Tishgart, also works. The two do not see each other when doing their individual tasks, especially with their different schedules.

“Based on our shared love and passion for music, [Sidney’s] interested in pursuing a job in this industry and because of this head start and opportunity at such a young age, she has had a leg up in experience around hospitality and understanding what it takes to manage a famous music venue,” Teel said.

Tishgart’s duties as an intern included shadowing most of the time to learn how to execute tasks, but ultimately she was trained on the different types of duties there was when getting the venue all set up and ready to use.

“There is a lot of factors in between venue set up and who your client is, any third party or help decorate or how they are going to hire music or if they are ever going to hire music or DJ’s,” Tishgart said. “There is a bunch of factors that we need to kinda look into or planning an event of any sort which I need to learn how to do.

But the tasks she must do can vary depending on what needs to be done at that moment but as far as she has witnessed there have not been many major conflicts with the music artists or multiple music artists at once. 

“One time I had to make a client gift and when your working especially in this industry, you have to be very resourceful, and I was under a very big time crunch and had to get items for free, so I had to go around asking various stores for free items,” Tishgart said. “Which sounds hard, but I was able to do it and was pretty impressed with how it turned out and there are certain things you have to do where you have to really step out there and sometimes even into uncomfortable situations, but once you do that there is a sense of accomplishment.”

Even though she is not being paid for the internship, she gets perks and bonuses that make up for all the hard work she does, such as free concert tickets that are worth hundreds of dollars. Not only does she get to go to concerts, but she is fortunate enough to bring her friends with her and get passes too.

“She has offered only a handful of times mostly because she typically knows about the free tickets only one to two days before the concert which is very short notice,” junior Jenny Toran said. “I’ve only gone to two concerts with Sidney so far but they have been really fun, I also went with her one day for ACL this past year and we saw so many artists including Lizzo and Fisher.”