UK: The Chalke Valley History Festival has chosen Topher to manage its traffic and security for the third consecutive year. The festival, which runs from June 27 – July 3 this year, attracts tens of thousands of visitors to its greenfield site to enjoy activities, speakers and historical re-enactments. Topher will be responsible for facilitating the safe and timely flow of all traffic in and out of the event, ensuring efficient and painless parking for all the visitors, and maintaining an effective security presence across the whole festival site. Topher traffic marshals are trained and authorised to stop and direct…
Author: Festival Insights
The 23rd Sónar festival consolidated its commitment to exploring new formats and content, both in its musical offerings and in the showings of its interdisciplinary, technology-centric conference Sónar+D. +D far exceeded participation expectations with a non-stop stream of people at the MarketLab stands and in the virtual reality-dedicated Realities+D area. The programmed conferences and workshops saw more than 3,800 attendees, with close to 584 scheduled meetings between experts, creators, entrepreneurs and investors in the networking areas. Insights spoke with Ventura Barba, Executive Director of Sónar and overseer of +D, predominantly about the ethos and specifics of +D. “We’ve obviously been…
FRANCE: This year’s Bordeaux Wine Festival has entrusted event technology specialist, Intellitix, to deliver innovative Tasting Passes embedded with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips at the prestigious wine festival, set to take place from June 23 – 26. Organised every two years, Bordeaux Wine Festival is Europe’s largest wine tourism event. Spanning 2km along a wine ‘road’ between the city’s 18th century buildings and the river banks of the Garonne, over 80 appellations from the Bordeaux and Aquitaine regions will be on offer at pavilions throughout the route. The event is expected to welcome 700,000 visitors from around the world,…
UK: Shambala Festival, set to take place from August 25 – 28, has sold out this week – proving that its bold decision to go meat and fish free has not affected ticket sales. The news coincides with research published this week, claiming that one in ten festivals will fold owing to ever-increasing security and infrastructure costs plus competition for ticket sales. Over its seventeen-year history, Shambala has been tackling the big environmental issues step-by-step, introducing numerous pioneering sustainability initiatives like becoming 100% renewably powered and eliminating all disposable plastics. Going meat and fish free is arguably the most controversial…
UK: The international delivery expert ParcelHero is warning that many festivals risk being cancelled by the latest blow to hit the festival scene: an increasingly torrential summer. One festivalgoer has already been killed by lightning at a US music festival this year, and Germany’s Rock am Ring Festival was forced to abandon its final day earlier this month after over 70 festivalgoers were injured by lightning. Now the festival scene is concerned about the impact of such storms in the UK. David Jinks, ParcelHero’s Head of Consumer Research, said: “In the wet summer of 2012, 57 UK festivals were cancelled…
UK: The organisers of Summer Days, the newly launched boutique music and food festival set to make its debut this year, have announced that the event has been cancelled. Summer Days was scheduled to take place at Clitheroe Castle from July 6 – 9 with headliners Simply Red, Jools Holland and Echo & The Bunnymen. A spokesman for Summer Days said: “After serious consideration we are heartbroken to announce that Summer Days festival 2016 will not take place. We have looked at every angle possible to keep the event live but due to a combination of factors including rising cost…
UK: Specialists in delivering high octane sound for international EDM events, Capital Sound returned to the award-winning We Are FSTVL site at Damyns Hall Aerodrome in Upminster over May Bank Holiday, fielding their premier Martin Audio MLA system on the three main stages. The production company last worked with promoter Reece Miller on the two-day event back in 2014, and with production values ramping up they were recalled this year by festival production director, Simon Barrington of Sibar Productions, with whom they have collaborated on Above & Beyond shows and last year’s Wild Life Festival. This year, with a cast…
UK: A survey undertaken by iconic fashion doll manufacturer Bratz has discovered that seven out of 10 parents are keen to head to a festival with their kids instead of on a traditional summer holiday. Perhaps predictably, Glastonbury was the clear favourite, with 22% of parents keen to attend. Over half of parents (54%) felt there was a real benefit to taking their children to a festival, with 20% feeling that the events represent great value for money and are less expensive than a family holiday abroad. Less assuringly, just under one in four consider them good opportunities to share…
UK: UK Lighting and visuals rental company Colour Sound Experiment recently celebrated 10 years of being a main technical supplier to Field Day – one of London’s premier and most popular urban music events, staged in Victoria Park, Hackney. “We are all extremely proud of that achievement,” commented Colour Sound’s MD Haydn Cruickshank. “And in that time have seen the event develop and diversify, all the time retaining its unique approach to music programming and its emphasis on delivering the highest production values to its audiences”. Working for LarMac LIVE, contracted by producers Loud Sound Events to coordinate all the…
NORWAY: The UK based electronic duo AlunaGeorge recently had its performance at Norway’s The Gathering Festival live streamed within the heavily pixelated digital realm of Minecraft. Graphical and animation limitations of this particular title notwithstanding, the virtual concert acted as a quirky, if not primitive proof of concept for transposing human performers into digital avatars in realtime. A video of the performance can be viewed below.