LABYRINTH
“ To see over 50,000 people, many visiting for the first time, not onlyimmersed in the music and experience, but also connecting with the heritage, dancing against the backdrop of this iconic UNESCO World Heritage site, was truly inspiring,” says Old Royal Naval College director of public engagement & commercial Kate Miners.“ Our vision is to preserve heritage in a way that keeps it alive, relevant, and vibrant for everyone. Partnering with Labyrinth Events was a bold step, and one that paid off. We’ re thrilled to have taken this journey together, and we’ re only just getting started."
The remarkable setting for the shows was complemented by the work of High Scream, which produced the audiovisual elements. Overseeing the event production was We Group, whose CEO Nick Morgan’ s job it was to handle the logistical challenges involved in staging the series of 10,000-capacity events at a UNESCO site so close to a bustling district of London.
Despite initial concerns, Morgan says local residents and businesses supported the event, and its promoters and producers were praised for both the community engagement and quality of the event’ s production. Here, Morgan
Nick Morgan
“ I ' VE NEVER SEEN THAT SORT OF FEEDBACK FROM SHOWS." provides more insight into the work that went on behind the scenes to make Labyrinth on the Thames one of the most successful event debuts of the summer:
How did you first get involved in Labyrinth?
I have been working with Nick [ Castleman ] and the team at Tofte Manor on their shows there for the past decade, and that led to us producing the shows at the Old Royal Naval College. It has been a long-standing relationship; they produce their own shows at clubs, but when it goes outdoors, and they ' re doing that more at scale now, we work with them.
What were the key challenges and complexities involved in producing Labyrinth on the Thames at such a sensitive site?
There was a lot of work involved, the level of planning was probably double that of a greenfield site.
It is a unique UNESCO site and that brings with it a lot of challenges in terms of appeasing the multiple stakeholders. You ' ve got colleges there that are operational throughout, and you have organisations, including Historic England, involved; so making sure that all the protocols were agreed in advance was really important.
There is also protective order on the site, so you can ' t stake into the ground and everything ' s on ballast. That ' s not uncommon, but what is different there is that even the ballast must be protected. That involved a whole other level of detail. All the traffic and plant movements on site had to be pre-planned very carefully. It ' s quite a tight build site so you must make sure that the build programme is such that people aren ' t going to be falling over each other. You are very prescribed by the existing buildings, whereas on a greenfield site you have multiple access points but Greenwich’ s Old Royal Naval College has only one access point and the boneyard could only hold two trucks at a time.
There is also the fact that Greenwich is notoriously busy with vehicle traffic and massive footfall from tourism, so
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