UK: LeeFest has announced that it will make a return to the UK festival scene in 2016. After taking a fallow year, organisers behind the award-winning music and arts event have broken their silence to confirm plans for next summer. The grassroots story, which began as a party in the packed back garden of Lee Denny, has until recently been held at Highams Hill Farm. This year the festival will celebrate its 10th year by moving to a new and larger site in Kent, details of which are currently being kept top secret. LeeFest is well known for spotting musical…
Author: Festival Insights
UK: Summer Days – the UK’s newest boutique music and food festival – has announced the first wave of acts that will support Simply Red on July 6 2016, the opening night of the festival. Double Brit and MOBO winning soul sensation Gabrielle joins the bill with a set packed full of chart toppers including ‘Dreams’, ‘Rise’ and ‘Out of Reach’. Also featuring on the line-up is Liverpudlian legends The Christians whose blend of pop and soul propelled them to many top forty hits and a multi-million selling number one album in the shape of 1990’s ‘Colour’. Fans can expect…
UK: Leading music charity Attitude is Everything and the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) have announced a new online campaign to benefit millions of deaf and disabled music fans. Launched at AIF’s Festival Congress in Cardiff, Access Starts Online aims to ensure that the UK’s independent music festivals are providing a designated and detailed access information page on their website. For disabled music lovers, such online information – although simple and cost-efficient to provide – is absolutely crucial, and often determines whether they will choose to attend a festival or gig in the first place. Additionally, many live music promotors…
BELGIUM: During the summer of 2015, Belgian company BeatSwitch made two intellectual property acquisitions: Buttons for Events, and MECANO – Alex Stevens’ impressive digital back office for the Dour Festival. These acquisitions have allowed BeatSwitch to offer a new accreditation module, crew management perspectives, and a more powerful artist management platform that makes the product a lot more relevant to the live music festival market. What’s most exciting about this big step for the young company is that it allows them, as the leading force in festival management software, to take an even more progressive approach to the industry. Accreditations…
Duncan Wheeler is an Associate Professor of Spanish Studies at the University of Leeds. He is currently on sabbatical, with plans including taking up a Visiting Fellowship at St Catherine’s College, Oxford; launching a new book series on Spanish Golden Age studies, developing a major new research project on the subject of nostalgia in 21st century Spanish culture; and continuing his editorship (Hispanic Studies) of Modern Language Review. In this article he examines some of the peculiarities for the Spanish festival market compared to the UK’s, with particular focus on Sonorama Festival as a quasi-case study. Having recently celebrated its…
UK: EventServ – the UK and Ireland’s leading event infrastructure support supplier – has been named as Scotland’s Best Event Services Supplier for the second year running. The company also took home the prestigious Event Services Grand Prix, an award presented to the best overall services supplier. Presented at this year’s annual Scottish Event Awards (held on 7th October 2015), the two awards are testament to EventServ’s growing portfolio supporting major events in Scotland including T in the Park, Royal Highland Show, Wickerman Festival and more recently partnering with Glasgow Life supporting its sub-brand, Glasgow Sport, as a Sports Pillar…
FRANCE: As the festival season recently drew to a close, Airstar has announced that it lit up well over half a million festivalgoers this year. Summer has historically been a busy season for Airstar whose solutions are now in high demand across major international festivals for public lighting, rescue and safety, signage and decoration. The European Festival season kicked off for Airstar with the Casetas de Biarritz (June 17 – 21). Tucked into the Basque coast of Biarritz between the Atlantic Ocean and the cliffs, the Casetas is a popular cultural event which sees various bodegas and restaurants lining up…
UK: Continental Drifts – the idiosyncratic multi-faceted event company – has launched a splendid new website. Comprising a small team of industry specialists, CD’s work spans across event management, experiential brand activation, artist booking and programming. Continental Drifts’ impressive roster has included LolliBop Festival, Blackheath and Southwark Fireworks, Festival 2012’s Summer Like No Other, The Big Lunch, Bestival, MasterCard’s Coin Rd, Bermondsey Festival, David Blaine’s Above the Below, The Queen’s Jubilee, Thames Festival and Shangri-La at Glastonbury Festival. The company is also an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation for its innovative Global Local project and London Remixed Festival. Continental…
UK: The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) and the Musicians’ Union (MU) have announced details of an agreement that will mutually benefit emerging artists who are represented by the MU and the AIF’s 55 member festivals. The ‘Fair Play for Festivals’ agreement will formalise the existing relationship between emerging artists* and independent festivals represented by AIF. Details of the agreement were unveiled in a session presented by the AIF’s Paul Reed and the MU’s Kelly Wood on day one of the AIF’s annual flagship conference and celebration event – The Festival Congress – in Cardiff. The agreement, which is an…
UAE: The 2015 Dance Afrique Festival, staged at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai, was a celebration of African music headlined by international Senegalese superstar Akon. The line-up also featured Congolese musician Awilo Logombia and singer / songwriter Flavour from Nigeria. The show was lit by Dubai and UK-based LD Steve Shipman whose design used over 120 Robe moving lights including 12 x BMFL Spots, all supplied by technical production company Solution Media. Steve had also designed lighting for the same show in London in August. The brief was to design a big colourful show with lots of ‘wow factor’ and eye-candy,…