This has to be the most stressful ticket buying event I’ve ever participated in! I saw one urban sketcher on FB said she needed a lie down, and another said they needed a camomile tea! …. forget that – I need a double gin and a valium!

Buying Tickets for the Toulouse Symposium

Tickets for the Toulouse Urban Sketchers Symposium are released at half-hour intervals. I thought I was so prepared and organised. I decided that if I didn’t get a sketch-pass, I’d just go for the 4-workshop pass – but before I could even click the purchase button, the Sketch-passes and 4-Workshop passes were sold out.

My second plan was to sign up for the Two-Workshop pass, but because the first release of tickets sold out so fast, I worried that by the time I got to this stage of the release of tickets, I wouldn’t get the workshops I really wanted.

So I decided to go for the three-workshop pass. My hands were actually shaking as I went through the different screens. The Eventbrite system is not the best designed, and even though I’d filled out all of my information in my profile, the system doesn’t pull it into the ticket purchasing process, so lots of it had to be filled out manually.

I pressed the proceed button, but there was information missing and I had to go back up the screen to fill it in. I worried that by the time I got to the buy-button, all of the tickets would be gone. But luckily, not only did I get the 3-workshop pass, I got the workshops I really wanted.

That was a complete ordeal, rewarded by a wave of relief!

I would have preferred a Two-workshop pass so that I could attend more sketch crawls around Toulouse. But I’m so grateful that I was able to get a pass to this symposium because my flights and hotel are already booked. I would have gone even if I didn’t get a pass, and maybe another year I’d go that route. But this is my first Urban Sketchers Symposium event, and I wanted an immersive experience of being a ticket holder.

Roll on July!