SERIOUS STAGES
The next stage for Serious
On the back of Serious Stages’ festival arm enjoying its most successful season to date, its operations director Abbey Thomas tells Access about the business’ ongoing evolution, including its expanded international reach, burgeoning film work, and a major focus on environmental sustainability.
One of the world’ s leading staging companies, Serious Stages was born out of helping Micheal Eavis with his staging at early Glastonbury Festivals and now services hundreds of major events worldwide. It has also become a major player in the film and TV industry, and launched largescale renewable energy solution provider Serious Energy.
From its base in Wells, Somerset, Serious Stages has been designing, manufacturing and installing stages for more than 40 years. Its founders Steven and Holly Corfield struck up a friendship with fellow farmer Michael Eavis during the early years of Glastonbury, becoming heavily involved in the installation of the festival’ s iconic Pyramid Stage. That working relationship has evolved considerably, and this year saw Serious provide 80 structures across the Worthy Farm site, including Glastonbury’ s four main stages.
“ The summer festival was our best yet, not only in terms of the turnover, but the quality of delivery, with an extended range of products that has resulted in great feedback from clients leading to us signing new multi-year deals,” says Thomas.
She says that one of the key factors behind the success of its festival arm this year was a focus on taking on fewer events but undertaking an increased amount of work at each:“ We are taking on more work on individual sites rather than trying to spread crews across multiple locations. That creates efficiencies, an economy of scale, and we have found it enables us to provide a better service.”
“ There has also been a trend to have one day concert series on a site, without the audience camping, with a strong artist line-up across each day. We’ ve installed stages and site structures for show days spanning weekends at Colchester Castle Summer Series, Wythenshawe Park, Crystal Palace, and Gunnersbury Park.” Thomas has enjoyed three‘ full-on’ summers in the role.“ The outdoor sector is a dynamic space at the moment,” she says.“ As my relationship with clients has grown, I’ m working closer with them to continually develop their infrastructure to push the audience experience to new heights.
“ Year on year we’ re seeing festivals up their game with improved production values and enhanced customer experiences. That means customising the stages and site structures to tailor more spectacular, immersive customer experiences. That is being driven by the artists wanting a more creative production and to get close to their fans, which means more overnight changes for crews adding elements such as stage thrusts. Our crews have been brilliant this year, fulfilling all of these additional elements to their build schedules. We’ re also supporting the events’ production
24 accessaa. co. uk