Lovefest is back once again in 2022, this year celebrating 15 years since its inception. The event is set to take place in Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia from August 4-6th, with an extra special lineup to mark the anniversary. Across five cutting edge stages there will be a cross section of electronic sounds from over 100 DJs and live acts, coupled with high-end production and a famously warm and friendly crowd. Ahead of the jubilee, we speak to Zlatana Pavlović to better understand the story and ethos behind the festival. What inspired you to get started? During the beginning of the…
Author: Andy Lenthall
We’ve all done it, drifting apart from school friends as our own lives, careers, businesses, and families lead our focus away from those carefree days. Old school friends Joe Courtney and Lucy Bateman’s lives followed a similar pattern until a certain similarity in career paths led them to team up and launch Soultown, which celebrates its 4th edition in Beckenham in September. We caught up with Joe to learn more about the birth, development and growth of the festival and brand, as well as asking…why soul? A question that others had already asked, apparently. “Yeah, it’s strange when I tell…
New ecolibrium trustee, Jamal Chalabi, brings sustainable Tour & Production experience to tackle industry travel emissions Jamal Chalabi, Tour & Production Manager at Backlash Productions, Sustainability Facilitator at UK’s Tour Production Group and Head of Touring for A Greener Festival, joins ecolibrium as trustee, July 2022. He brings 30 years of touring and production experience to the charity’s mission to support the live event and music industry tackling the environmental impacts of industry travel. Through his role at Backlash Productions, Jamal has worked with high profile artists spanning multiple genres: from DJ Shadow to Pendulum and more recently with Bring…
Further underlining organiser of the Showman’s Show, Lance Show & Publications Limited, commitment to promoting sustainable best practice, this year’s exhibition, held at Newbury Showground from 18th-19th October, will see the introduction of a ‘Hub’ to the show floor. The new space will play host to the second meeting of Vision:2025 Festivals, an initiative launched by industry steering group Powerful Thinking, which brings festivals together with the aim of working towards a more sustainable industry. Taking place on the afternoon of 18th October the meeting entitled: Sustainability Skills & Knowledge Update will see 60 of the UK’s festivals, who have…
An influential cross-party group of MPs and peers issued a major report today calling on the Government to tear down the barriers facing UK musicians touring the EU. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Music (APPG on Music), which numbers more than 100 MPs and Peers, published the Let the Music Move – A New Deal for Touringreport, which outlines the urgent action the Government should take to help UK musicians and crew tour Europe more easily. The report warns that UK music workers are “facing more costs, more complications and getting fewer opportunities” since the UK left the EU at the…
The UK’s live music industry can get back to touring this summer thanks to new Government rules lobbied for by LIVE, which come into force today. One of the major post-Brexit hurdles for EU touring has been the 3 stop limit for UK registered trucks in the EU, with the same limit imposed here for EU registered trucks. Major UK trucking firms have invested significant sums in opening EU based subsidiaries in an attempt to get over the problem, many subsequently found difficulties in having the right trucks with the right registration in the right place at the right time.…
With the season well underway and festivals struggling to recover in a climate of ever increasing costs, councils are warning that because of outdated licensing fees, local taxpayers are heavily subsidising some commercial events and are calling for fees to be updated. The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils in England and Wales, is calling for Government to enable councils to set licensing fees at a level that recovers the full costs of administering the work for each event and premises. Under the Licensing Act 2003, councils are responsible for granting licences for premises providing entertainment and alcohol,…
Steve Jenner’s new venture, Metafests, builds on years of international experience supplying event technology and cashless payment services, and is preparing to announce signing the company’s first UK Festival. He shares insights on why festivals are ideally positioned to thrive as a transformative new era of business, entertainment and life dawns, propelled by the seismic shift to Blockchain technology… Hindsight leaves no question that live entertainment, as a business and consumer experience, has been heavily reformatted each time the connected world has taken a new stride forward. Anyone that was around back in 1999 will recall how the internet’s domestic…
Truck Festival, the Oxfordshire-based music festival founded in 1998, returns to Hill Farm from 22-24 July 2022. This year, the festival features a number of new elements delivered by independent production company Method Events. It is also supporting UN Women UK’s #SafeSpacesNow campaign to tackle harassment and ensure all who attend have a safe, inclusive experience. Truck Festival’s alignment with the #SafeSpacesNow campaign will see increased welfare provisions on site, including ‘guardian angels’ offering support to attendees, and training for festival staff to respond appropriately to sexual harassment. UN Women UK will have a safe space set up on site…
Independent production company Method Events are delivering a blockbuster edition of Tramlines festival this summer, which returns to Sheffield’s Hillsborough Park from 22-24 July 2022. This year’s event builds on the success of the award-winning Tramlines 2021, which was one of very few festivals to go ahead as a pilot event under the government’s Event Research Programme last year. For their work on the pilot, Method Events were the recipients of both the Supplier Team of the Year and Best Production/Site Management awards at the Festival Supplier Awards 2022. Building on this experience, the team at Method have planned a…