USA: The annual Electric Forest Festival featured jam band and EDM music across five stages at the Double JJ Ranch in Michigan from June 23 – 26, as well as a wide array of arts installations and experiential elements. When Lighting Designer Travis Shirley was tasked this summer with lighting the festival’s main stage – called the Ranch Arena – he also had the objective to offer an equal opportunity lighting rig for both daytime and nighttime artists. To do this, he designed and specified a lighting rig that would cut through daytime ambience and that would also do justice…
Author: Festival Insights
UK: National ticket agency Gigantic has become one of the biggest operators in the UK to team up with Twickets as its official ticket resale partner. Now live, the new service is integrated into the Gigantic online platform which means it will automatically search for tickets on Twickets when an event is sold out. Customers are then offered a direct click through to Twickets when tickets are available. The partnership also allows Gigantic ticket holders who can no longer attend an event to sell unwanted tickets to other fans for face value through the Twickets resale platform. Twickets allows customers…
UK: The UK Festival Award-winning Sound City – the nation’s largest metropolitan festival – will celebrate its landmark 10th birthday from May 27 – 28 2017, with what organisers promise to be the biggest and best yet. Plans for next year already include a move to Clarence Dock – the historic 19th century terminus for steam ferries from Ireland – which will provide a larger capacity for entertainment, enhanced infrastructure, improved facilities and even more beguiling views of Liverpool’s iconic sky-line. Sound City CEO, Dave Pichilingi, said: “Every year we strive to deliver more and for our 10th birthday we…
Jonathan Gomma is a co-founder of Beetle Juice, which serves the nation’s festivalgoers with freshly made cocktails via its array of converted Volkswagen bars. Beetle Juice is currently in the process of franchising and providing young entrepreneurs with the opportunity to build a business in their area of the country and offer festivals more choice in their offerings. It has been fairly common practice for festival organisers to sell exclusive pouring rights to an alcohol brand or volume bar operator. This practice has been encouraged by a small number of specialist bar operators whose prime interest is serving as many…
UK: We Are FSTVL has revealed the first details for its fifth edition, taking place from May 26 – 28. New for 2017, We Are will be introducing camping to the FSTVL, enlisting the help of Pop Up Hotel, Tangerine Fields and Morning Gloryville. The new hospitality elements encompass hot tubs, a woodland spa, a tall ball pool , giant pillow fights , We Are Sports Day, the Glitter Palace, the Blowdry Bar, a campfire and pop up restaurants. Once again, We Are FSTVL will partner with a multitude of clubbing’s most reputable brands for its curatorial needs, including Circoloco, Jamie Jones’…
Off The Record, a multi-venue music festival and conference for emerging artists, made its debut in Manchester on November 4. Conceived in a partnership between From the Fields, Liverpool Sound City and Louder Than War, the organisers assembled an array of respected curators to select the relatively unheralded acts populating its line-up – which was revealed the day before the event. Some of those hand-picking the artists were Guy Garvey of Elbow, Huw Stephens from BBC Introducing, singer-songwriter Frank Turner, and more. The accompanying music conference featured the new guard of the music industry, including label and publishing folks, A&Rs,…
UK: The Northern Festivals Network – a consortium of festivals committed to raising the quality of arts available to families at Greenfield festivals – has teamed up with Unlimited, an organisation that believes disabled artists can and should work across all forms, to address the lack of disability led work for families, and the lack of deaf or disabled artists producing work for greenfield festivals. “We were natural partners from the start, given each of our individual ethos’,” said Cathryn Peach, Manager of the Northern Festivals Network. “Being able to come together and exchange our knowledge of family audiences and…
UK: Powerful Thinking has launched the Industry Green Survey 2016, helping to track industry progress and shape support for all festivals to move towards more sustainable practices. Those surveyed are entered into a raffle to win one of five ‘Smart Power Scans’ from Zap Concepts Consultancy — a completely free audit of a festival’s energy to identify where they can save fuel and money. Plus, a chance to win a free delegate place for the Green Events & Innovations Conference in March 2017 at the ILMC. Click here to take the survey. The survey closes on November 30. Powerful Thinking…
INDIA: GOAT Festival, a brand new boutique music and arts festival, is heading to Indian shores in January 2017. The three-day festival is to be held on Ashvem beach, which is hidden away in two acres of lush palm grove, sheltered by the sand dunes and facing directly west across the Arabian Sea. From January 27 – 29, GOAT will curate the future sounds of India and elsewhere alongside performing arts, theatre and spoken word, including Gilles Peterson, Sarathay Korwar, Dope St Jude, Kiasmos, Marquis Hawkes, and many more. GOAT festival is presented by GOAT Music, a London based music…
Marino Fresch is the Marketing Director of UK & Ireland at primary ticketing agent Eventbrite. He is an experienced online marketer and e-commerce professional with over 15 years’ experience defining marketing and web strategies, and executing strong online marketing that has a proven, measurable impact to customers. Before he joined Eventbrite, he worked with leading brands including, eBay, Expedia, Eurostar, Ryanair, John Lewis and BMW. Marino holds an MBA from Cornell University. The business of event sponsorship has been growing steadily for years, and is now worth more than £43 billion worldwide. Ideally you’ll form a partnership with your sponsors…