“Making a Statement”

“This summer, organisers and promoters have taken the opportunity to deliver something new and special to music fans and festivalgoers. StandOut looks at how new stages, arenas and staging products are changing the customer experience and making a statement…

Read the full piece at standoutmagazine.co.uk/october-2024

October 2024

“When festivalgoers walked through the gates at Reading and Leeds Festivals, they finally got to see the culmination of nine months of head-scratching and engineering conundrums. Serious Stages, Colour Sound Experiment, Mobile Stadiums, Rope and Rigging and Special Structures Lab worked meticulously to deliver a new stage – named Chevron – on behalf of Festival Republic. Serious Stages’ new Stellar Stage – which debuted at Crystal Palace Park this summer – was used to host a range of headliners, including The Prodigy and Skrillex, but in front of the stage – with its 20-metre wide roof and eight-metre screens – was a “floating LED mesh” suspended over the audience, creating a spectacular light show. Both Chevron stages at Reading and Leeds Festival were transformed by the LED mesh, which has been dubbed the LightCloud. This immersive barrel vaulted LED web of pixels was tensioned over an audience of 50,000 people and suspended by a series of bespoke steel tensile catenary cables rigged to vertical steel perimeter truss masts. With a total span of 60 metres and featuring ten x 2.25-tonne supporting truss masts at 25 metres in height, these structures were designed to create unique festival focal points. Audiences underneath each LightCloud were dazzled and immersed by visual content programmed to be an extension of the video, laser and lighting spectacles around each act on the stages. The entire lighting grid suspending the LightCloud weighed 5,550 kilogrammes, 168 tonnes of counterweight was used to anchor each structure and more than nine kilometres of steel tensile cable was used (4,630 metres per stage). “The Chevron is more than just a physical stage, it’s a testament to Reading and Leeds’ continued commitment to innovation and industry leadership,” explained Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic. “We demonstrated this previously, with the introduction and success of dual main stages in 2021. This year, I saw the opportunity to do something new and truly special, reflecting the audience’s evolving tastes and cutting-edge production the show is known for. This elevates our electronic and hip-hop music offerings, while still delivering six main-stage headliners and a strong representation across other genres.”

IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE

Serious Stages supported Festival Republic’s desire to create a new-look Chevron stage, with the introduction of the Stellar Stage. Its angled sides gave the crowd a different aesthetic and accommodated the technical production elements housed side of stage. With the tower roof giving a 14.5-metre stage height, it was more intimate than the 25-metre TZ Main Stages with their curved video screens supplied to Reading and Leeds for headliners Fred Again and Liam Gallagher. “The reaction to the Chevron stage has been immense,” Benn continued. “Tens of thousands of music fans danced under the sky canopy of hundreds of thousands of glowing LEDs and what the artists were able to do with the tech was something to behold. “Reading and Leeds never stand still and the Chevron absolutely delivered on giving audiences a whole new immersive experience and artists an opportunity to produce something they’ve never done before. There were some impressive performances across the weekend from The Prodigy, Barry Can’t Swim, Nia Archives, and Skrillex and it will only continue to get better as time goes on and artists bring their bespoke shows.”

KEEPING THINGS FRESH

Festival Republic was not the only organiser to commission a new stage this summer. Cream contracted Acorn Event Structures to deliver the Zenless Zone Zero stage at Creamfields, PepsiCo worked with iD to deliver the Pepsi Tower at Wireless, NoNonsense Group worked with All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and provided AEW’s All In London event with a 30m x 30m roof, which sat over the ring, Junction 2 introduced the Dome, a fully enclosed pitch-black rave tent with four dance platforms and a 20-metre wide lighting rig, Shambala worked with Special Structures Lab and d&b audio on a new second stage called Solasta, and Boardmasters contracted Lucid Creates to deliver The Point, a stage inspired by the natural landscape comprised of 2,000 wooden panels, each interspersed with fully programmable LED bars. Becka Whiteley, marketing director at Shambala, said the festival’s much anticipated Solasta stage made its debut and was a huge hit. “We wanted to switch things up and keep Shambala’s offering fresh, with a stage that could play host to both banging live bands, and the biggest DJ and electronic music names on site,” she commented. “Solasta certainly delivered. “The huge, open plan structure enabled 2,500 thousand revellers to dance comfortably, under beautiful projections and lasers and its cutting-edge, 4D soundscape sound system was something to behold.”

GAME-CHANGER

In November, Cream HQ revealed what it called a” game-changing new superstructure” for the 2024 edition of Creamfields. The 30,000-capacity indoor main stage was branded as the Zenless Zone Zero stage. Open until 4am and offering festivalgoers an additional main stage destination for the Friday, the Zenless Zone Zero stage gave Ian Greenway, director of LarMac Live and Creamfields’ production director, an opportunity to get creative. “The brief we get from Scott [Cream MD Scott Barton] is to try and evolve things but you can only do so much in a big top, so what you can creatively develop each year pushes towards something like Creamfields Runway stage [launched in 2022],” Greenway said. “Previously, we had two main stages from Acorn both programmed equally so when Scott said let’s rethink what we’ve got, we took one of those main stages indoors.” Acorn’s new structure – called Sonic Arena – was originally called Apex by the Creamfields team before it became a sponsored stage. Andy Nutter, CEO of Acorn, said: “When our in-house design and build team created Acorn’s Mega Structure, that launched at Creamfields in 2016 under the Steel Yard branding, we always hoped we could go bigger! Through our strategy for continued innovation, growth and the trust of valued clients, the Sonic Arena became reality. Designed for a global market, it has taken audience experience to a new level while exceeding other venue capacities.” He continued: “Weather had a big impact on August bank holiday events this year, a trend we are seeing more of. We believe festivals with indoor structures will see increased ticket sales over the coming years as audiences want to ensure their experience is not hampered by the elements.” From a production point of view, the new Apex structure enabled the Creamfields team to put big-name DJs on during the day because it was not limited by daylight. But would another mammoth structure be considered as just another Steel Yard? In a word, no, said Greenway. He explained: “With its pitched walls, flat roof and legs, it felt different to Steel Yard. The legs upped roof capacity, we kept Kinesys in Steel Yard and with its huge stage end show and big LFX, the Zenless Zone Zero stage wasn’t the same.”

BE MORE CREATIVE

Greenway was assisted on site by Alex Mackie, production manager (shows), Matt Smith, production manager (artists), Finlay Bowrey, production coordinator, and Craig Campbell, Jake Campbell and Gareth Owen, production site coordinators. Together, they worked alongside Acorn, Adlib, BPM and ER Productions to deliver the new venue, which benefited from a longer build period. “If you have more comfort in the build, you can be more creative when getting the show in,” Greenway continued. “We’re finding that there’s less incoming production from EDM (electronic dance music) artists which puts more pressure on our teams to produce shows for headliners but then it gives us more control and we don’t have to shoehorn production in.” He added: “As for 2025, it will be interesting to see what the brief from Cream will be. They want to look after the EDM market, for the crowd to have a good time, and to spend money on the things that the ticket buyer sees.”

TRENDSETTING

As well as delivering technical production at Creamfields, LarMac Live was also kept busy this summer, delivering all guest experiences at Adele World in Munich and all secondary stages at the singer-songwriter’s ten-night residency in Germany. Live Nation GSA’s Marek Lieberberg, the promoter behind Adele’s staggering residency, described the show – in a custom-built colosseum with perfect open-air sound – as trendsetting. More than 730,000 fans from across the world watched the artist perform in the open air in a bespoke pop-up arena, comprised of a 4,159.7 square metre LED wall – the largest of its kind. The stage, which curved and wrapped around the crowd, featured a sweeping circular passerelle that enveloped the audience and brought Adele closer to her fans. At the confluence between the passerelle and the catwalk was an illuminated B-stage, that elevated Adele into the heart of the arena and concealed within the passerelle was an ensemble of string players that rose at pivotal moments to unleash the drama of a 42-piece string orchestra. The arena, which was the brainchild of co-promoter Klaus Leutgeb, and the accompanying Adele World were built within four months, only to be dismantled again immediately after the last concert. This was preceded by more than a year of planning which saw close collaboration between Stufish Entertainment Architects, StageCo, TAIT – supplying its largest ever MAG Deck stage – and Solotech to create the spectacle that perfectly demonstrates the level of detail that organisers and artists will go to deliver jaw-dropping and memorable experiences.”

Caroline Clift (She/Her)
Editor, StandOut magazine
caroline@standoutmagazine.co.uk
standoutmagazine.co.uk