EXTRAORDINARY MOMENTS

The opening and closing ceremonies of Birmingham 2022 wowed audiences across the world. Here, Birmingham Ceremonies’ Gary Beestone, technical director, and Zoe Snow, executive producer, reveal all about the large-scale celebrations, including creative processes, lessons learned, and challenges

When Misty Buckley decided that she wished to see a huge mechanical bull parading around Alexander Stadium at the opening ceremony of Birmingham 2022, no one envisioned that the bull would get its own Twitter account, or a petition would save it from being dismantled. Public reaction to the bull was so great that immediately after the opening ceremony, a campaign was started to ensure the bull would remain in the city as a tribute.

The campaign worked; Councillor Ian Ward, leader of Birmingham City Council, said that the public’s outpouring of love for the bovine creation had cemented its future – at least until the end of September.

According to Gary Beestone, director of Gary Beestone Associates (GBA), the opening ceremony’s creative team wished the bull to dominate Alexander Stadium. Buckley wanted the bull to stand proud at 14 metres. In the end, the bull measured ten metres high and regardless of its reduction in height, wowed the audience. Good job, as it took Beestone six months to negotiate an area within Alexander Stadium to “cover” the bull prior to its stadium debut. He did not wish to spoil the surprise.

The bull – designed and built by Artem – was pulled into the stadium by 50 women representing the female chain-makers of the industrial revolution, who made chains used in the slave trade. The segment later saw the women breaking free from their chains. “What you’re actually seeing is a load of Foamex attached to a 17-tonne telehandler,” said Beestone. “But when you see the women pulling the bull, the whole scene becomes a goosebump moment.”

The bull was just one of many moments enjoyed by a live crowd of 30,000. But the live audience was not the creative team’s first consideration. Martin Green [chief creative officer of Birmingham 2022] wanted a “broadcast first ceremony”. It was vital that the organising team appealed to a younger audience too. Digital media would play a huge role in audience engagement throughout the Commonwealth Games.

“Quite often, broadcasters rock up at a rehearsal with their cameras and take what’s there. If those cameras are present from the beginning, then I think you can look at how best to tell a story,” Beestone continued, who worked on the project alongside Zoe Snow, also a director of GBA.

GBA partnered with Done and Dusted and pitched for the ceremonies tender as Birmingham Ceremonies Ltd. They pitched for the contract – to produce and deliver the opening and closing ceremonies – knowing that TV would be central to the overall look. In fact, Beestone said that the process – to set up a dedicated ceremonies business – made sense.

“Zoe and I are passionate about events, so we were protective about the experience of those in the stadium,” explained Beestone. “No one would enjoy watching the show at home if they didn’t believe that people in the stadium were having a good time. We had to balance many decisions. For example, how does the creative look down the lens and translate to an audience of 30,000 in the stadium? Zoe was the executive producer, and I was the technical director. We looked at the budget together rather than in silos [producing and technical] and that made a massive difference to the end result. The entire team worked so closely together that we didn’t have to change the show to make it work for broadcast. This meant a better show for both audiences [live and TV].”

Beestone and Snow surrounded themselves with experienced events professionals who had worked on large-scale opening and closing ceremonies projects. But the team also featured new talent. It was a requirement of the contract to try and recruit as many people from Birmingham and the West Midlands as possible.

Beestone commented: “The team who had experience of working on large-scale ceremonies enjoyed working with those people who had not done it before. They enjoyed being challenged and being asked: ‘Why have you done it like that?’. It gave the show energy that wouldn’t have existed if we’d just gone to the go to circus that goes around the world. Because we [GBA] could say that we had never worked on a large-scale opening ceremony either, it gave others in the team confidence.”

Snow added: “We worked with some incredibly talented people, working with them to figure out what does work, but we also wanted to do things differently.

“For instance, we spent the budget in a different way. We didn’t ship people to Birmingham and put them up in a hotel for a year. When we won the contract, we came out of the pandemic and people were working remotely. We brought them to Birmingham when needed and tried to spend the money on the camera and the show in the right places.”

Snow explained that some of the team had not worked in a stadium environment before. It was important that those new to large-scale projects felt supported. “Also, we had an incredibly creative team but the knock-on effect of COVID meant that some of their other shows had been rescheduled,” she said. “It was a constant juggle. It was a case of knowing when to apply pressure and go ‘I really need you’ and giving other people on the project space to work on their other shows so that they could hit their deadlines.”

The minute that Birmingham Ceremonies Ltd signed the contract to deliver the ceremonies, Beestone and Snow met the creative team and explained the “world situation”. It was vital that the organising committee and ceremonies team moved faster than they were used to. The supply chain had to be tied down. Buckley designed the show as the creative was still emerging. This was necessary. Working side by side, Beestone and Snow could ensure that the creative team was supported and that the technical and wider production team got what they needed. Less “creative time” was wasted because initial creativity meetings were held on Zoom, and there was a huge requirement to deliver certain elements of the show quickly because of the need to secure the supply chain.

Blackout, CW Plant, DeltaLive, PRG, ES Global Solutions, Pyrojunkies, Titanium Fireworks, Total Solutions Group, Stage One, Sunbelt Rentals, ADI, Showforce, and Steeldeck Rentals were just some of the suppliers contracted to the event.

“The strength of our supplier relationships was so important to us,” Beestone continued. “It was incredible. At times we had to pick up the phone to someone who hadn’t been awarded a contract and ask for help with crew or LED pixel mapping, or whatever it was. The supply chain was great. Everyone wanted the ceremonies to be good because if they are good, it looks better for all of us and the industry. Our partnerships with suppliers were crucial and it’s what delivered the shows on budget and on time.

“That faith also helps when you’re questioning your life choices at 3am in the morning when you’re reprogramming fireworks,” Beestone chuckled.

The opening and closing ceremonies required more than 250 rehearsal sessions – the opening ceremony featured a cast of more than 1,500 and more than 850 people appeared in the closing show. A 32acre off-site rehearsal venue was created at the old MG factory in Longbridge and 159 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions were saved by powering the rehearsal site with renewable energy. The opening ceremony featured 983 lighting fixtures and 290 kilogrammes of pyro, and the time

from the start of the load in for the closing ceremony to the first act appearing on stage was 22 hours.

But what stood out and what did Beestone and Snow learn? Snow said: “We learned where to take risks and about how brave we could be with the storytelling. Martin wanted the opening and closing ceremonies to be quite different and because you’re spending Government money, you felt like you had a big responsibility for how the money was spent.

“We learned to trust our instincts and trusted those who had worked on largescale ceremonies before. We also had to consider that the opening and closing ceremonies were just 10 days apart but 90 per cent of the team were shared across both events. How we balanced their schedules and where we put the priorities was a big learning, but we empowered the team and gave them support.”

Beestone is now looking forward to a holiday and intends to “reintroduce” himself to his children. He concluded: “What stood out for me? The extraordinary way people come together to deliver ambitious shows; especially when we had just come out of a period that was so turbulent and unpleasant. I had braced myself for the impossible but what we achieved was fantastic. Delivering the extraordinary is really fun.”

England enjoyed huge success at Birmingham 2022 – a mammoth project that required the expertise of UK events professionals to deliver 16 Games venues and a host of cultural sites. Here, key individuals reflect on the event’s delivery

On the final day of competition at Birmingham 2022, England won ten medals. The last day of the multi-sport event saw the hosts secure their most successful Commonwealth Games ever with a huge medal haul, taking their total to 176, second overall in the medals table. England’s previous best medal tally was 174, an achievement set at Glasgow 2014. But whilst the athletes’ achievements – on the track, in the pool, on the court, and on the course – are not to be dismissed, the lengths to which the UK’s events industry went to should be celebrated even more.

Despite immense challenges, hundreds of suppliers delivered comprehensive event infrastructure and overlay to ensure that more than 6,500 athletes from 72 countries could compete and entertain thousands of visitors.

Operations were a mammoth task, overseen by an army of events professionals. Mick Wright, Birmingham 2022’s executive director of workforce and Games services, oversaw workforce planning, volunteer management and training, COVID planning and response, as well as core operational responsibilities such as catering, cleaning, and waste, and readiness planning, including test events. He, and other members of the executive team – Guy Lodge, senior venue development and overlay specialist, Charles Quelch, executive director of operations, and Adrian Corcoran, chief information officer (technology and broadcast) – plotted to deliver the Games across 16 venues.

The organising committee (OC) of Birmingham 2022 was “determined to do things differently”. In all, 12 local authorities hosted the sports venues and so the OC adopted an integrated approach to liaison and management, committing to run one recruitment and training programme to ensure continuity.

Integration was key to the successful running of the Games, explained Wright. The integration of sport and Para sport was paramount. ‘We were determined to make sure sport was sold as sport,” explained Wright. “For example, when you talk about cricket T20, we sold tickets for cricket T20 and not women’s cricket T20. The sport had to stand out for itself.”

More than 1.3 million tickets were sold to sporting fans across the globe, making Birmingham 2022 the most attended Commonwealth Games. But it was not the only impressive Games statistic. Accreditation was a “monster” with 70,000 accreditations issued. Plus, there were 14,000 volunteers, including 6,390 from Birmingham and the West Midlands. The Games consisted of 33,000 contractors and the overlay team installed 51,000 temporary spectator seats, seven kilometres of partition wall, 40,000 square metres of trackway, and 54 kilometres of crowd control barrier. Hotel room nights (excluding the five athlete villages) totalled 125,000, 13,500 deliveries were made into Games venues during Games time, 650,000 spectator journeys were taken on shuttle buses, and of the 9,695 COVID tests undertaken by athletes and officials, there were 703 positive results. Of those, following treatment and medical help to enable athletes to compete, only six athletes were too ill to take part in their chosen sports.

According to Wright, much emphasis was placed on collaboration, supplier relationships, and working together. COVID “ripped the heart out of planning time” and impacted vital supplier time. Wright agreed that the tender process was more complicated than it needed to be. It would have been better if tenders were issued, and awarded, earlier, Wright said. But that’s what happens when you deal with a non-departmental Government body – everything takes longer.

“I learned that with the time you’ve got, you must make sure that the emphasis you put on people and the plans you have for integration are paramount. When you have limited interactions, you must spend double the amount of effort on comms and making sure everything is understood.”

He continued: “You can take things to the wire if you have good plans, good contractors, and resilient people that are prepared to work together. But there’s a difference between scraping through and delivering something that you can be proud of. We had good relationships with some of our supply chain and contractors, but could they have been better? Yes, and could we have got people on board earlier? Yes.”

Wright described the Games’ Smithfield site – home of the beach volleyball and basketball 3x3 competitions – as “outstanding”. “People often say ‘build it and they will come’. That’s what happened with this venue – it had a great vibe,” he said.

The Smithfield Festival Site – delivered by ODP, a collaboration between ADI, JA Productions, and OPUS – sat at the core of a vibrant, open space, with the Commonwealth Games’ beach volleyball and basketball 3×3 competitions taking place around it.

Tasked with uniting culture and sport, ADI created a community hub with a bespoke three-sided 210 square metre LED screen and stage structure that played host to an array of digital commissions from across the region. ADI conceptualised, designed and installed the showpiece “Beacon Stage”, which provided a focal point for entertainment and celebration throughout the Games, including a variety of interactive multiplayer games.

ADI’s production team, with the help of the JA Productions and OPUS staff, then managed the video, audio, lighting and SFX for not only the key live sporting moments but all the on-stage performances.

Over the course of the Games, Birmingham’s most popular civic squares – Victoria, Chamberlain, and Centenary – quickly became the beating heart of the city centre. Huge crowds gathered to watch the sporting action on the giant LED screen, while the sounds of more than 150 local musicians poured into the surrounding streets from the performance stage in Victoria Square.

In transforming the iconic spaces into an environment that aptly celebrated Birmingham’s diverse culture and breadth of artistic talent, ADI designed and managed content for 106 square metres of LED and performance on the bespoke stage design that framed the city’s famous “Floozie in the Jacuzzi” sculpture. This included a totem and multifunctional gantry, the latter of which was used to welcome and inform spectators through creative content, as well as stage the finishing line of the marathon events.

Thomas Taylor, head of sales, ADI’s Live Division, said: “We were delighted to showcase Birmingham’s wide array of local talent and create engagement by transforming numerous city centre locations into unique spaces. To see our concepts and ideas evolve into a reality has been a rewarding experience for all at ADI. This bespoke level of live site event delivery has been the first of its kind and has never been done before by the Commonwealth or Olympics. The success of the festival sites proves that spectators do not just come together for the sporting action, but the cultural and community elements.”

Wright agreed: “If you take public perception as a measurement, people thought the Games were great. The Games gave the country a boost; the country was ready for a big celebration.”

GL events UK, the events infrastructure specialist, was appointed as the official overlay supporter for the Games with responsibility for planning, designing, and delivering a wide-ranging number of temporary infrastructure services, as part of the turnkey overlay delivery contract.

In total, GL events UK provided Birmingham 2022 with three double deck structures and 280 smaller temporary structures across 12 venues. These had to be delivered over a six to 10-week period, and on top of GL events’ core summer business.

“Historically, as an industry, you put stress on your core team, and we didn’t want that to happen. We didn’t want our regular clients to know that we were working on the Commonwealth Games; we didn’t want the project to impact them.”

GL supplied media structures, toilets, gantries, cable tunnels and bridges [containment], trailers, showers, and cabins, and all HVAC, flooring, electrics, and fire exits within its tents. Accessibility was a big consideration. In fact, GL events UK invested in a DDA-compliant, aluminium steel frame ramp system because it did not wish to make ramps from wood that would have entered the waste stream. The new system will now be placed into stock for other organisers to hire.

David Tunnicliffe, GL events UK’s commercial director, explained: “It was a mammoth project and now it’s delivered, there’s a sense of sadness and a sense of relief.

“Ground rules were set from the beginning and the tender process started with dialogue sessions – that honesty and transparency were essential to the safe delivery of the project.”

Tunnicliffe argued that event suppliers need to educate clients on the importance of design freezes and make them aware of the impacts if freezes do not happen. It’s just one of the learnings that he and the team will take away from the project.

Like Wright, Tunnicliffe also learned that whilst working on Teams is great, you cannot beat human interaction – “boots on the ground is better”.

“We took on lots of freelancers and we didn’t train them well enough in the GL way or culture,” said Tunnicliffe on reflection. “We had induction days but not enough and we could have done them better.

“That said, the influence the Games had on the people of Birmingham and emotion around those 11 days of competition was positive and uplifting. It’s nice to feel we’ve been a small part of that and that feelgood factor.”

Wright concurred and concluded: “It’s been great and it’s rewarding to be involved with something so successful. It’s also been exhausting with all the challenges; it’s been a real ride. It’s nice to be sat on this side of it and to look at what we’ve achieved.”