UK: With just under 30 days to go until BoomTown opens its gates, the UK’s largest independent festival has announced a new area, complementing 24 stunning themed main stages across a huge festival site. Located deep within the numerous woodlands spread throughout BoomTown, House In The Woods will encapsulate the innovators and dreamers behind the best in house, disco, techno and boogie with a curated line-up from four of the UK’s most influential tastemakers. Further igniting the house-heavy vibes on Friday will be renowned Bristol natives Shapes, who’ll be teaming up with underground trailblazers Flux to bring two legendary figures…
Author: Festival Insights
UK: Featuring artisan food producers, street food slingers and the very chicest of chefs, Bestival’s Feast Collective will this year feature hosts Samantha Evans and Shauna Guinn, also known as the Hang Fire Smokehouse, who will not only be taking charge of culinary proceedings but also elevating authentic southern state American BBQ to the next level, using sublime British produce. The gastronomical gauntlet will also comprise the self-explanatory Coffee Camper, truly sustainable sushi from Happy Maki, home spun Ghanaian cuisine courtesy of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, Korean BBQ purveyors Korrito and Le Rac Shack, Seadog, Makatcha, Thoroughly Wild Meat Co., Biblos,…
UK: Avolites’ lighting and video control solutions provided an integral part of this year’s Glastonbury Festival, with representation across the Pyramid Stage, Other Stage, John Peel Stage, Silver Hayes and Arcadia. An Avolites team of fifteen was onsite to liaise, support and connect with the many talented industry professionals working on the festival, further strengthening Avolites’ association with the festival. The Avolites equipment included consoles, dimmers and media servers being used across the festival site. Saturday headliner Kanye West drew plenty of comment before the festival began, but after his appearance it was the lighting that garnered the most discussion.…
John Drury is a social psychologist at Sussex University. He has been conducting research on crowd behaviour for 25 years. Some of the crowd events he and his colleagues have investigated include the Hajj to Mecca, the Hillsborough disaster, the poll tax riot and the July 7th London bombings. His group’s research website is here. His research findings have informed guidance on disaster response, for both the Department of Health and the US Department of Homeland Security, amongst others. He has provided consultancy and education to a number of event and crowd safety organisations, including the Event Safety Institute (NL)…
UK: Green Hippo were once again invited down to Worthy Farm in Somerset by their compatriots at Bryte Design to join the John Peel Stage production team for this year’s Glastonbury Festival. This was the first Glastonbury visit for Hippotizer V4 and Green Hippo were very pleased with the results. For the production on the John Peel Stage, Hippotizer V4 drove video on nine vertical columns of LED, supplied by Vortex Hire along with their Hippotizer V4 Karst. “After our recent investment into Hippotizer V4 we were excited to test drive our Karst Server at Glastonbury on the John Peel…
UK: SGM’s groundbreaking IP65-rated LED solutions featured right across this year’s vast Glastonbury Festival site. Starting at the iconic Pyramid Stage, a wide range of powerful washes, LED strobes and dynamic 3D effects cascaded down to a number of smaller stages where they performed long duty cycles flawlessly over the four days. While 14 of the G-Spots, provided by HSL, graced the main stage (seven on each PA wing) elsewhere the scramble was on to secure inventory, in particular, for the popular and award-winning P-5 washlight. Main stage lighting was supplied by Neg Earth, and with The Who headlining, their…
UK: For the first time this year Sound City demonstrated its renowned commitment to emerging artists by joining forces with PledgeMusic and Liverpool-based professional campaign consultants JUXDIT, to offer three new acts the chance to launch their very own PledgeMusic direct-to-fan campaign and compete for the chance to appear live at the 2015 Sound City festival. The chosen acts – Sankofa, Gerry Cinnamon and Scarlet – each performed during this year’s festival and the fan reaction was incredible. All the bands received significant funding from the campaign with Sankofa securing 68% of their target by the end of the four-day…
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO: The annual open air Open House festival is one of the main events in Trinidad and Tobago’s music scene. Featuring international and local gospel artists, it is held in the capital city Port of Spain at the Urban Ministries venue – a guest house and event space. The audio system was entirely supplied by RCF for the second year in a row. System designer Victor Downer, of local company Audioworks, used RCF TT+ and D Line Series equipment to cover the area where live exhibitions where attended by thousands of people every night. Products used were, on…
UK: For its 17th year as the official technology and communications partner of Glastonbury, EE once again created a bespoke 4G network onsite and offered free phone charging services to revellers. Glastonbury attendees downloaded eight terabytes worth of data via EE’s powerful 4G network – the equivalent of more than two million Lionel Richie songs. The most iconic element of EE’s activation this year came in the form of the ‘4GEE Charging Bull’ – an innovative new charging solution and double-speed 4G WiFi solution in one. Those onsite who spotted the festival-themed Charging Bull were able to plug in their…
Linnae Ponté oversees MAPS’ harm reduction program, the Zendo Project, and has travelled internationally to coordinate and train volunteers to offer psychological support to individuals having difficult psychedelic experiences, in order to reduce the number of drug-related hospitalisations and arrests. For Linnae, psychedelic harm reduction is an essential service for festivals, capable of transforming potentially traumatic experiences into opportunities for growth and showing that safe, expansive experiences are possible without the need for law enforcement-based policies. She is currently completing her Master’s in Counselling Psychology at CIIS and is a co-therapist intern in MAPS’ MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for anxiety associated with…