COVER FEATURE but also Parklife; with the latter involving the production and advance of nine major stages, compiling a security plan with more than 1,000 onsite security personnel, along with the infrastructure and transport plan. Meanwhile, Engine No 4’ s co-founder Jon Drape led the community impact team for both events, handling residents liaison and community impact considerations.
“ Heaton Park was amazing,” says Gee.“ We went there on 23 May to get Parklife built and didn’ t leave until mid-August because we rolled Parklife straight into Oasis. Heaton Park ended up feeling like home for a lot of the team for much of the summer. It was a great experience, challenging and interesting, to shift that site from being a festival layout into a single stage layout and then keeping that running for five nights, over 10 days.
“ In terms of specifics of the changeover between the two shows, everyone was very keen on sharing as much infrastructure as possible,” says Gee.“ There were multiple layers of almost every bit of site infrastructure kit on the CAD plan, to cover what it would look like for Parklife and what it would then look like for Oasis. Doing the swap over between those two shows in the turnaround period was quite complicated in lots of ways. It would have been easier just to take it all out and start again from scratch.
“ Literally every single cabin that was on site for Parklife was either staying in place and getting turned into something else or getting moved somewhere else into storage before it could be moved into its final position for Oasis. Around 50 % of the trackway that went down for Parklife stayed in position, but then more came in to create coach stations and bus stations – overall there was a slightly bigger set up for Oasis. So, working with the trackway teams to make sure they were lifting the right panels and then bone yarding them in the right place to put them back down in the right place for the next phase of it was a challenge.”
Gee says Wythenshawe Park also proved to be one of the highlights of the summer for the team:“ It’ s another really positive event for the Manchester area. It was the event’ s third year, and it felt like it had really cemented; we got the park set up and running efficiently and proved the model on paper works for it to continue rolling out. It was a great finishing weekend of the summer.”
Coming together
At the tail end of last year, Far and Beyond( FAB) founder Jess Shields hired former Live Nation UK COO John Probyn as group head of event operations. She says Probyn ' s involvement has helped significantly boost operations this year, at what was already a burgeoning production company. Among FAB’ s many notable projects this summer were Forbidden Forest, Radio 1’ s Big Weekend, Radio 2 in the Park, Creamfields, Download, the British Grand Prix Concert and the debut of Newcastle festival Come Together.
The launch of TEG Live Europe and RG Live’ s 70,000-capacity Come Together in June at Newcastle’ s Town Moor was billed as the‘ largest outdoor music event the North East has ever seen’. It saw headline performances by acts including Robbie Williams and Kings Of Leon. Probyn took on the role of event director.
Another key summer project handled by Probyn, who is currently preparing to take on some major FAB event projects in Asia, was 50 Cent’ s headline show at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in July. FAB took over as operator of the Forbidden Forrest Festival this year on the back of its daily capacity having been expanded from 7,000 to 22,000. Promoted by Forbidden Festival Ltd, the event was staged in the grounds of
The Download team
Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire from 29 May to 1 June on the back of a £ 1 million investment in an improved site layout and infrastructure improvements.
Last year, FAB took over the running of Download festival, an event Shields has had a lifelong association with having grown up next door to its Donington Park site. Her first role in the events industry came in 2008 when, straight out of university, she took on the role of production assistant at Download. Shields has learned to associate Download with mud, but as with almost all the events FAB worked on this summer, this years’ Download was blessed with dry weather.
“ It ' s been a great year for FAB, and I think it ' s been a great year overall for event operators because the weather has been so kind,” says Shields.“ I haven ' t had a single show this summer where we ' ve had any sort of weather instances; for most of them we ' ve had glorious sunshine. It turns out, doing this job when you ' re not knee-deep in mud is actually quite joyful. I’ ve never known Download not to have been hit by horrific weather at some point. It ' s been brilliant.”
Having been a local resident herself, Shields says building strong relationships with the local authority and community are integral to FAB’ s approach, and much has been done at Download to improve that relationship.
“ Since we took over Download, one of our biggest areas of focus was winning back the good faith of the local residents, because from years previous to us being there it had gone really badly wrong,” says Shield.“ Now we ' ve got everyone on side, and our job is ten times easier.”
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