Holly Smith works at Hubbub, a charity that takes a fresh approach to communicating environmental issues, focusing on people’s passions such as fashion, food, homes and neighbourhoods. It avoids doom, gloom and lecturing about carbon footprints, instead keeping its communications and events positive, sociable, collaborative, relevant and open to all. Festivals provide a chance for attendees to let go of their workload, worries and inhibitions. Unfortunately, guests also tend to let go of whatever they are holding, thereby generating vast amounts of litter. One of the hardest items of litter to clean, but least stigmatised, is the cigarette butt. The…
Author: Michael Baker
Over the course of the last 35 years, EnTEEtainment has provided site coordination, event management and production services to everything from Glastonbury Festival to the Scottish Bagpipe Championships. Its founder Dick Tee recently celebrated his three and a half decade anniversary in the live events industry, and spoke with Festival Insights about the trajectory of his career, his opinions on CDM guidelines, and projections for the future of festivals. At the tail end of the Ziggy Stardust tour on June 24 1973, a teenager named Dick Tee saw a man named David Bowie perform at Fairfield Halls in Croydon. Twenty-seven…
Thomas Van Orshaegen is the co-founder and CRO at BeatSwitch, the leading festival management software that powers more than 125 festivals worldwide. His passion lies where music, technology, marketing and customer centric problem solving intersect. We are always on the lookout for new technology and opportunities within the festival industry, and last week at the BeatSwitch office an idea was sparked by one of our clients. The client told us that he was struggling to manage his Facebook event page and obtain actionable insights from the data. Another issue he had was once the Messenger extension was added messages overflowed,…
UK: TheTicketSellers has become the first festival industry ticket agent to integrate a travel carbon calculator, in conjunction with the Energy Revolution project. The travel calculator allows ticket-buyers to calculate their real carbon emissions when travelling to an event. They then have the opportunity to donate to ‘balance’ their emissions. 100% of donations are invested in renewable energy projects. By crowdsourcing donations alongside ticket sales and investing in renewable energy projects, Energy Revolution turns fossil-fuel travel miles from festivalgoers into a world-changing positive investment. The first festivals to sign up to TheTicketSellers new green service are Subsonic, Shindig, Moseley Jazz…
To artists whose various statuses all come prefixed with ‘un’– undiscovered, unsigned, underground – the music and festival industries can seem hopelessly intimidating and impenetrable – like a 60-storey Brutalist skyscraper with windows only on the top floor. Despite the World Wide Web ostensibly opening endless new avenues towards exposure, most seem like dead ends considering the inordinate amount of fellow musicians competing to have their demos channelled directly into the earholes of Very Influential People. Oversaturation is an understatement when it comes to the marketplace of emerging talent, and this conversely has had an effect on festival organisers embarking…
Steve Jenner runs the UK division of PlayPass, which opened in October 2015. Founded in Antwerp, Belgium in 2012, PlayPass has set the industry standard for the reliable and cost-effective delivery of cashless payments, access control, brand activation and crew management at festivals and live events across Europe and Asia, using NFC and other technologies. PlayPass’ clients include Lollapalooza Berlin (DE), Rock Werchter (BE), Melt! (DE), Splash! (DE), Graspop Metal Meeting (BE), Antwerp Sportspaleis (BE), Low Festival (ES), Cruïlla Barcelona (ES), BIME (ES), Clockenflap (HK), Les Trans Musicales (FR), Caprices (CH), Piknic Electronik (ES) and many more. Eastern Electrics was…
An online petition has been launched encouraging the organiser of Download Festival, Andy Copping, to drop metal supergroup Down from its line-up in light of its frontman Phil Anselmo performing Nazi salutes and chanting ‘white power’ on stage a fortnight ago. The vulgar display of [white] power occurred at this year’s edition of Dimebash, an annual event honouring the legacy of the late Pantera and Damageplan guitarist Dimebag Darrell. Having been filmed during the outburst and subsequently exposed as a Nazi-sympathising dunce, Anselmo received condemnation from fellow metal luminary Rob Flynn, plus much of its wider community. Metal festivals, on…
Mojo Barriers is the original international supplier of aluminium stage barrier systems, providing an extensive range of products and services to live events including festivals, tours, corporate events, sporting and cultural occasions. Amongst its festival roster are major international festivals such as Roskilde, BoomTown Fair, V Festival and Zurich OpenAir. Festival Insights spoke with Kevin Thorborn and Alex Borger of Mojo Barriers, about its success stories of 2015 and plans for the imminent new year. Festival Insights: Mojo Barriers seems to have enjoyed an incredibly busy summer, supplying both V Festival sites, BoomTown Fair, Zurich OpenAir and Roskilde. Which other…
Since interviewing Marcato last year, the festival management software company has been busy – so much so that it necessitates the use of italics. In addition to launching an entire new line-up of products, it has expanded its client roster, revamped its website, refined its existing solutions, written for Insider Insights, and probably discovered a way to defy the second law of thermodynamics. This time around, Insights spoke to Ethan Fenton – Marcato’s Marketing Manager and self-professed Collector of Many Fine Cardigans – about all of the above, aside from their potential reversal of entropy. Festival Insights: Marcato has recently…
TheSoundYouNeed (TSYN) is a music discovery Youtube channel that was created in December 2012 during one night of fevered activity as Olivier Dutertre transferred his SoundCloud playlists to YouTube. With his own abstract visual aesthetic and smartly tailored design, TSYN offers warm, sensual mixes that move easily between deep house and exploratory electronica. Three years later, it has over three million followers. Last summer Olivier partnered with UK-based AEI Media, the cross-platform media giant behind UKF, Drum&BassArena and Subsoul. From there TSYN went to the next level, releasing a compilation album and putting on huge parties in Europe and Australia. Growing up in…