Although festivals are giant fields of fun, they are a risky (and sometimes) fatal financial commitment for many organisers. It would explain why your average ticket price has skyrocketed to £200, as prices to keep people safe, fed and hydrated are rising annually. With bad weather closing increasing numbers of festivals around the world, how many festivals will survive the next decade? Specialist large & heavy delivery service ParcelHero can now reveal where your ticket money goes and how much it really costs to throw the biggest parties on the planet. Check out the infographic below, or alternatively visit ParcelHero’s…
Author: Festival Insights
This article was originally published in the spring issue of Protocol Magazine, and was written by Dr. Kevin Kloesel, who chairs the esteemed weather advisory group for the Event Safety Alliance. Lightning kills thousands of people across the globe every year. Lightning also arrives with an audible alert system (thunder). Thunder is an immediate warning of dangerous conditions outside. If thunder is heard, anyone outside is in danger of being struck by lightning. It does not have to be raining for lightning to occur. In fact, many lightning fatalities occur when rain is not falling. Other threats, such as damaging…
DENMARK: ‘Culture jamming’ activist duo The Yes Men interviewed Edward Snowden live via satellite on June 28 at Roskilde Festival. The project – in tandem with a number of satirical signs posted around the site by The Yes Men – aimed to increase knowledge about digital surveillance. The Yes Men are famous for raising issues like climate change through the use of false identities and messages. At this year’s Roskilde Festival, they have put emphasis on digital surveillance as a topic they want discussed on a much broader scale. The signs were put up in selected parts of the camping…
UK: Freedom Festival – Hull’s urban arts festival which commemorates the city’s historic links to the cause of freedom – has revealed its 2016 programme. Featuring over 200 performances taking place across the city from September 2 – 4, the three-day flagship event promises to illuminate the streets with theatre, music, dance, spoken word and much more. The festival – which launched in 2007 to commemorate anti-slavery pioneer William Wilberforce – is expected to draw more than 100,000 visitors, setting the stage ahead of Hull’s year as UK City of Culture 2017. Mikey Martins, chief executive and artistic director of…
UK: Having helped establish the inaugural Wild Life event at the new Brighton City Airport festival site last year — fulfilling an idea floated by dance music specialists Rudimental and Disclosure — Capital Sound returned in 2016 with its Martin Audio MLA system to build on that success. With SJM Concerts again promoting the event on the Sussex coast, and the experienced Simon Barrington and Mike Oates in charge of production duties, Capital equipped three of the four featured stages with the award-winning MLA Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Arrays — including the indoor Supercharged stage for the first time. Another first was…
USA: Full Circle Productions and Basscraft are set to provide Void Acoustics sound systems to the upcoming Northern Nights Music Festival in California, which will be utilised by a unique line-up of artists and engineers, featuring lots of bass music, house, hip-hop and plenty of other niche electronic acts. “We were approached by Northern Nights Music Festival with a couple of challenges,” said Jacob Ford, President of Full Circle Productions. “They were interested in only using Void Acoustics sound systems for all three stages and an extremely powerful, beautiful sounding yet steerable sound system for the main stage.” In the…
Lindsey Barnett is a Key Account Manager at Zest Recycle. Lindsey works with the team that specialises in the events sector, providing consultancy, waste management services and staffing to events, festivals and hospitality venues. Working with clients to help improve waste management practices, WCRS has recently published a free knowledge guide to managing waste and recycling at events. Drawing on her knowledge and experience, Lindsey takes us through some of the steps outlined in the guide to help festival and event organisers manage their waste more sustainably, compliantly and economically. The key to a successful event waste management programme is…
UK: NEWSUBSTANCE designed, fabricated and installed a giant dog’s head at this year’s Download Festival at Donington Park. Standing 6.5m high to the top of his ears the Download Dog was a commission by Festival Republic and Live Nation, providing a compelling and immersive realisation of the iconic festival emblem. With a tight lead-time, NEWSUBSTANCE worked closely with Live Nation and Festival Republic. Critical to the success of the project was ensuring that the overall look and feel of the structure captured both the spirit of the revered Dog logo whilst offering festivalgoers a tangible experience and interaction with the…
UK: Over 100 bands performed on Serious Stages in front of 80,000 rock fans from June 10 – 12, as Serious supplied staging and ancillary structures to Download Festival for the first time. The 13th Download Festival boasted headline performances from Rammstein, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, with Serious providing the stages to house rock royalty and structures to house their production equipment. A Serious-designed and manufactured 25m x 30m Tower Roof was the main stage, which was renamed ‘The Lemmy Stage’ in memory of the late Motörhead front man Lemmy Kilmister. Complete with a 6.2m cantilever giving great audience…
UK: PlayPass has confirmed Standon Calling as the latest UK festival to implement its RFID cashless payments system this summer. Standon Calling, a leading UK independent festival, was the first British festival to go fully cashless, and has led the way in the successful application of this technology ever since. Visitors to the 13,000 capacity event, held on the grounds of a 16th Century Hertfordshire manor house, will – as of this year – be able to top-up funds before they arrive onsite, and also incentivising audience to register for ‘Auto Top-Up’. This signature feature of the PlayPass system automatically…