Tunes Festivals’ Tommy Job on competition, expansion, and fish! page 18
Generate better revenue
API integration with ticketing platforms
Pre-book vehicles
Virtual hangers
Complement existing stewards’ role
On the day payments
Permits
LPR Enforcement
Full Reporting
Improved ESG
Always the right choice
10 WINNING PITCHES
Check out the latest event tenders and news of contract wins
13 FOR THE RECORD
More than 56,600 people completed the 45th edition of the TCS London Marathon. Here, London Marathon Events discusses the record-breaking running event
18 IN TUNE
Whilst some organisers are cancelling their events, Tommy Job, director of Tunes Festivals, continues to expand the Tunes brand
21 PARK LIFE
AMAAD’s Will Harold on the creation of BM Park Live and positioning Boston Manor Park as a sustainable location for more live and large-scale events
25 BIG VICTORY
Event professionals played a key role in special commemorative events to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day
29 ESTABLISHING A CONNECTION
Wi-Fi and comms are essential to a customer’s event experience and smooth event operations 34 NEW MOO-VES
The Great Yorkshire Show’s Rachel Coates on how GYS is using digital methods to entice a new audience
39 BETTER TOGETHER
Could working with a “competitor” open new doors and help you to grow? Event production companies discuss the benefits of collaboration
49 GETTING A FRESH PERSPECTIVE
StandOut goes behind the scenes at The Boat Race 52 HELPING HANDS
Many festivals could not take place without volunteers. Staffing and volunteer management best practices go under the spotlight
49 GETTING A FRESH PERSPECTIVE
39 BETTER TOGETHER
21 PARK LIFE
25 BIG VICTORY
JUNE 2025
ometimes, when you prepare features on relevant industry topics or set out to identify a load of industry trends, your research can often unearth big challenges that can make for some quite depressing reading. Well, I am pleased to report that this issue of StandOut is brimming with nothing but positivity. From tales of expansion with Tunes Festivals’ Tommy Job (page 18) to details of A Man About A Dog’s plans to put Boston Manor Park on the map (page 21), there’s a lot to get your teeth into.
As always, I have loved chatting with so many event professionals and this month, there have been quite a lot of you. It’s brilliant news, because when people share stories and best practices, it provides others with an opportunity to learn. For example, turn to page 29 and you can discover what some event organisers are asking suppliers to do on their sites to improve comms and Wi-Fi connectivity. Check out page 49 and find out what I learned from spending a day in event control at The Boat Race. Or flick through to page 52 and hear the latest advice on running effective volunteer management and staffing programmes. But that’s not all.
This June edition of StandOut also bigs up local authority event teams, the event professionals responsible for delivering the record-breaking TCS London Marathon, and the event production companies that are working together to create new opportunities. In fact, could working with a “competitor” open new doors and help you to grow?
Following on from The Fair’s Millie Devereux’s insightful opinion piece in last month’s special anniversary edition of StandOut, we have spoken with more event production companies to discuss the benefits of collaboration and why – if you are confident in your delivery skills – you should not fear opening up your company processes to others. Intrigued? Make a brew and hop to page 39, and if you have an opinion to share once you’ve read the article, drop me a note. Hearing your cool stories is the favourite part of my job, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Craig is managing director and co-founder of Project 30, an event management company providing a range of professional event production and project management services to a host of new and established festivals, sporting events, and corporate clients across the UK. A director of Events Industry Forum, the organisation behind the Purple Guide, and a passionate advocate for events, Craig is also founder of the South Coast Events Forum, an informal network dedicated to supporting event professionals across Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire. Prior to his current role, Craig was MD of the multi-awardwinning Bournemouth 7s Festival, where he led the team behind the sport and music festival for 11 years.
WILL HAROLD
Will is executive director of U-Live, director of LWE, and CEO and founder of A Man About A Dog (AMAAD), the electronic music promoter. A seasoned events professional, with more than 20 years’ experience in events and festivals, Will is well-versed in event, venue, and festival management, as well as artist liaison and operations. In this latest edition of StandOut, Will discusses the launch of BM Park Live, a series of electronic music events at Boston Manor Park, and why he wants to position the park as an important and sustainable location for more festivals and large-scale events.
LISA THOMPSON
Lisa is a seasoned sporting events professional and has worked at London Marathon Events (LME) for more than 30 years. Lisa joined LME in 1994 in an entry coordinator role and has since worked her way up through the organisation. For example, Lisa spent eight years as course manager before becoming director of operations in 2018. Now, as event lead, a role she has enjoyed for more than six years, Lisa is responsible for leading a vast team that work hard to deliver the TCS London Marathon.
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The Production Services Association has appointed Hannah Ratcliffe as its new GM.
Ross Aitken is head of event operations at Glasgow 2026.
Tristan Betty is production coordinator at Festival Republic
Barry Blue is now lead health and safety advisor, F1 GP and mass events at Formula 1
David Bulow is now director at Ontrax Rentals
Wood has joined 20-20 Events as event operations manager.
Adam Pike has been appointed head of creative strategy at Event Buyers Live
Joe Wilkinson is director of production at Bearded Kitten
Elizabeth Cobley is now head of operations at The Events Company
The Walt Disney Company and Miral have agreed to create a Disney theme park resort in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. To unveil this news, Miral appointed HQ Worldwide Shows to produce an official announcement ceremony. The launch event featured a floating stage, a 107-piece orchestra, a 100-strong choir, and a breath-taking finale with lasers, lighting and pyro. But the standout moment? Nine-thousand drones illuminated the night sky to create a 650-metre Disney Castle that emerged from the water.
LINKEDIN POST OF THE MONTH
Jessica De Leeuw Van
Weenen, freelance event manager and head of event operations at Lost Minds Festival
One thing I’ll never understand in the events world... why do so many supplier quotes not include a total cost?
It’s so common to receive a quote that lists:
• £X per metre
• £X delivery
• £X install
• Damage waiver
• “Other charges may apply” … but no total price.
When you’re managing event budgets, especially across multiple suppliers, knowing the full cost upfront is so important. It saves time. It avoids surprises later down the line. It makes approvals much easier.
Big appreciation to the suppliers who send clear, itemised quotes with a total included. It really does make life easier for event teams working to tight deadlines and tighter budgets.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Stay Sound and Check Yourself is a new book providing advice to event professionals on mental health in events. It is available to download for free
The fourth edition of Sustainable Events Management: A Practical Guide has been published.
Rubbish Ideas is offering Vision for Sustainable Events members free access to its Rubbish Portal – a waste and carbon
Sophie
Winning pitches
MSLG Safety Consultants has been appointed by South Ayrshire Council as safety manager of the International Ayr Show – Festival of Flight 2025. Also, Cherry Blossom Events has been appointed as the event’s site manager.
Furniture On The Move has been selected as a preferred supplier for Exhibition White City
Saltash Town Council is seeking tenders from contractors to provide lighting for various events, including Christmas events, other town-organised/national events, and public holidays. Email tenders@saltash.gov.uk– the deadline is 5pm on June 25.
Key Structures has been awarded approved supplier status (three-year contract) at Somerset House
Luxury Picnic Company, Covered Occasions Marquees, Stretch and Tents, Lavender Green, Lex Marquees, Lightwave Productions, and Amie’s Kitchen have been named as preferred suppliers to Royal County of Berkshire Polo Club. The venue wishes to grow the number of weddings and private events it hosts.
London Luton Airport (LAA) wishes to implement a video production framework. The chosen provider will work with the LLA marketing team to create videos that showcase airport events and campaigns. The deadline is 12pm on May 30. Email Shannen Gillingwater – procurement.team@ltn.aero
SXSW London has appointed TAIT as production partner.
Renfrewshire Council has appointed Cirque Bijou to produce Paisley Halloween Festival’s parade and town centre activities.
Gary Beestone has won a contract worth £690,000 to support Tower Hamlets’ events team with council-organised events.
Cardiff University has awarded Field and Lawn an £89,000 contract to provide a marquee for its graduation ceremonies in July.
Aberdeen City Council is looking for an experienced festival or event production company to curate and produce Spectra, its annual light festival, in 2026 and 2027. The deadline is 12pm on June 17. Email David Officer – davofficer@aberdeencity.gov.uk
BERKSHIRE POLO CLUB
CAPITAL BARRIERS &
For the record
More than 56,600 people completed the 45th edition of the TCS London Marathon. Here, London Marathon Events discusses the record-breaking running event
fter years of meticulous planning and a relentless pursuit of excellence, it was an incredible honour to see the TCS London Marathon officially become the biggest marathon in the world,” explained Ben Craddock, senior event experience manager at London Marathon Events (LME) and finish director of the 2025 TCS London Marathon.
Indeed, the revered sporting event broke many records when it took place on April 27. Not only did it become the biggest marathon in the world when 56,640 people crossed the iconic finish line on The Mall, but the 45th edition of the London Marathon also set a new world record for the biggest annual one-day fundraising event. More than £75 million was raised for charities from this year’s edition.
As finish director, Craddock has had the privilege of standing at the line where dreams are realised, records are broken and history is made. This year, that finish line meant even more, he said. It marked the culmination of a collective effort – from the whole LME events team to the thousands of temporary staff and volunteers to the event stakeholders and suppliers, who have shown tremendous LME support over the years.
People, Newman Event Services, ADI, GAP Group, Vacant Hire, Arena, and X2Consult were just some of the event suppliers contracted to provide event equipment and services to the 2025 TCS London Marathon.
Together, they worked long and hard to implement several small changes to the event site that would improve the participant and spectator experience.
Lisa Thompson, event lead at TCS London Marathon, explained: “Overall we had great feedback from participants on the 2024 TCS London Marathon. Therefore, 2025 was about tweaks and small improvements rather than wholesale changes.”
Thompson continued: “There was a small route change for 2025. We opened up the Canary Wharf area to provide a more efficient spectator flow. The previous route snaked around the estate and inhibited spectator flow during busy times. On marathon day, the area can get very busy, so we changed the route, still keeping it contained within the Canary Wharf Estate, but this change meant we had to conduct a full re-measurement of the new section since, of course, the route must be exactly 26.2 miles.”
Thompson commented further: “We also appointed Halo, the incident management platform, featuring multi-agency login capabilities, keeping teams updated in real time through a secure, auditable system, ensuring accurate incident resolution and full legal compliance.
THE FINISH LINE – WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE
“Over the course of the event weekend, more than 360 users engaged with the platform. In addition, our custom QR reporting tool enabled stewards, volunteers, and other workforce members to quickly report safety concerns, enhancing responsiveness and onthe-ground safety management.”
THE RACE IS ON
However, these operational measures were not the only new additions for 2025. Penny Dain, group marketing and communications director, co-ordinated the marathon’s special 45th anniversary celebrations, which included a special event at Outernet on the Friday before Marathon Weekend. The event comprised a digital display of great moments in London Marathon history and a social wall featuring images provided by past participants.
Dain said: “2025 was a landmark year as we celebrated both the 45th edition of the London Marathon and the 40th edition of the Mini London Marathon.
“The 40th edition of the Mini London Marathon, with a record total of more than 15,000 children and young people, featured an alumni wave where previous participants, including runners from the very first edition, took part with family members.
“This year’s event was phenomenal,” Dain continued. “We set a new Guinness World Record as the biggest marathon in the world with 56,640 finishers. Ted Metellus, race director of the TCS New York City Marathon, was in London with us and we fully expect New York to challenge that record in November. We’ve been working on modelling increased participant numbers for many years and we knew we were on course this year to pass New York’s record of 55,646.”
SUSTAINABLE MOVES
The 2025 TCS London Marathon was already the most popular marathon on the planet, achieving the title for the most ballot entries for a marathon event. In 2024, 840,318 people applied via the public ballot for the 2025 edition. However, that figure has now been toppled because 1,133,813 people from across the globe have already applied in the public ballot for a spot at the 2026 TCS London Marathon, which takes place on April 26, 2026.
It’s a little too soon to think about operational changes for 2026, since a comprehensive event review will take more than six weeks. But undoubtedly, LME will want to build on new measures that cemented LME’s commitment to professional operating procedures and sustainability.
Thompson commented: “We introduced Team Green for 5,000 participants this year. This was one of our sustainability initiatives, where we created a new start assembly area for participants who opted in to a ‘no bag to start’ policy. This reduced the number of lorries required to transport kit bags from start to finish.
“We also provided a ‘bag drop at finish’ facility for Team Green participants so that they could drop off a bag on Saturday, which would be available to collect as they finished on marathon day.”
Kate Chapman, head of sustainability at LME, worked alongside Thompson and the wider LME events team to implement the new initiative. Again, it was not the only new sustainability measure.
Chapman said: “We introduced additional tap-water refill points around the course to cater for the increasing number of runners who choose to carry their own hydration. There is now tap water at the start and finish and at three refill points on course. Plus, some of the urine from the women’s urinals
at the start area was sent to be made into agricultural fertiliser – turning a waste produce into something useful and replacing the use of chemical fertiliser.”
STRIVING TO DO MORE
Peequal partnered with NPK Recovery to repurpose the urine collected from the urinals. Moves such as this make it easy to understand why LME has become the first event organiser in the world to be awarded the Council for Responsible Sport’s (CRS) prestigious Evergreen certification – the highest level of achievement possible.
This was the first time LME had been assessed by CRS across the whole organisation, rather than a single event and the award builds on LME’s previous achievement of Gold certification for the 2023 TCS London Marathon. The marathon became the first major event in the UK and the biggest running event in the world to achieve that status.
LME used the ReScore app, a cloud-based application for event planning developed by Tata Consultancy Services. ReScore enabled LME to measure the environmental and social impact of its work, as well as report, verify, and certify against sustainability standards set by CRS. Specifically, the app offers a tracking and monitoring system, templates, resources, and best practice case studies to support transparent and verifiable impact reporting.
Hugh Brasher, CEO of LME, said: “Positive social and environmental change is at the heart and soul of London Marathon Events. We work to inspire our participants, our stakeholders and our partners, as together we can achieve so much more. We’re delighted that our work as an organisation has been recognised by CRS with Evergreen status and we will continue to strive to do more.”
CANARY WHARF
In Tune
Tommy Job, director of Tunes Festivals, is sitting in The Watering Hole when he stops to chat with StandOut. The live music bar situated on Perranporth Beach, Cornwall, is owned by Job’s family and it’s where Tunes Festivals, a proud promoter and organiser of live music events, all started.
Today, the beach in front of the bar continues to host Tunes in the Dunes – Tunes Festivals’ first foray into the festival world –
Whilst some festival organisers are cancelling their events, Tommy Job, director of Tunes Festivals, continues to expand the Tunes brand
and the bar is just one of the places where Job and his team often find themselves, deliberating their next moves.
In fact, in just a few hours, Job will be leaving The Watering Hole to head to Swansea to oversee the build of Tunes on the Bay, the latest festival to join Tunes’ growing portfolio spearheaded by him and his love of events.
TAKE A RISK
“Why have you expanded into Wales?” StandOut asks Job, curios as to why he has ventured away from Devon and Cornwall, the counties where all Tunes’ other events take place. “There are a lot of ambitious people in Cornwall who do events,” explains Job. “They’re seeing us do more, which means they want to do more, so the market in Cornwall is becoming very saturated.
“We knew we wanted to organise more events so we decided to look outside of the county. I have friends in Wales and they said that we should do an event there, on the beach so, we got in touch with Swansea Council, who were keen for us to do one. We thought, let’s try it and give it a go. I thought it was better to take a risk in a different area, rather than take the same risk in Cornwall where everyone’s trying to appeal to the same audience.”
BEACH VIBES
Tunes on the Bay was launched in 2023 and was set to take place in 2024. However, in January 2024, Job decided to postpone the event. Tunes Festivals needed “another year” to make sure that the festival “was done right”. The event took place this May, almost two years since the seed was planted, but when you’re organising events on sand, you’ve got to get it right. Job continues: “I’ve grown up on a beach. Anyone can really do anything in a field, but the beaches come with complications, but also, I think, with a reward. There’s nothing better than being in the sand when the sun’s out and looking at the sea. There’s a special vibe that you can get from a beach and it’s quite a specialised thing to produce something on sand.”
COSTS
Currently, Job and his team are scouting out areas because they are keen to expand Tunes Festivals even further afield. Potentially taking the brand to cities such as Bristol, Taunton, or Bournemouth. But first there’s the small matter of delivering (as StandOut types) a further eight festivals this year. Including another new event – Tunes on the Shore –which is set to take place at Carlyon Bay.
TOMMY JOB (he/him)
“Last year, we saw production costs go up by a third and a third the year before. Costs are just jumping, including artist costs. The bigger artists have probably gone up by like 50 per cent this year,” Job adds. “I’m hearing it from everyone. Everyone is up against it, and I think we are as well, but we’re able to weather the storm a bit better because of the model we’ve created and put in place for times like this.”
MIDDLEMEN
COVID forced Job to take a long hard look at the business. When Tunes Festivals first launched, there were some teething problems, but motivation and passion were the drivers to keep moving forward, creating events for likeminded individuals.
Some locations were harder to make money in, putting Tunes on the back foot. Job continues: “We went through COVID with a few hundred pounds in the bank, but it gave us a lot of time to reflect and change our business model.
“People were telling me to bankrupt the company and that I was mad, but I believed in the festivals and I could see the vision. We needed to act serious, take a serious approach, otherwise we were not going to be here anymore.”
Job continues further: “We decided to cut down on artist spend and look at different
ways and audiences to market to. Then we looked at our ticket systems and opted to code our own ticket system. Plus, we thought, right, let’s get our own production stuff, like staging, tents, scaffold, truss, Mojo barrier, and bar structures so we went off and bought it all ourselves.
“We realised there was a lot of middlemen in festivals; everyone wants their slice of the pie. Agents, suppliers, traders, workers. Everyone walks away and gets paid, apart from the director of the company, who sits there with the risk and usually out of pocket, but, I believed in Tunes and still do, so we have made things work.”
FISH AND FESTIVALS
Job says that organising festivals is long and hard work. He says that Tunes Festivals is now in a good place and is in a position to move forward, and he thinks anyone in events, who thinks they can make money in year one, or even year three, is mistaken. Why? Because despite the “perfect” festival set up, it took him seven years before Tunes in the Dunes turned a corner.
“The festival market is like the fishing market in Cornwall,” Job comments further. “People would make a load of money off fish, so they got more boats, and then more people started doing it. The next thing you know, you’re short on fish. That’s similar to the
festival market. There are more festivals but there isn’t more people, so audiences are just picking and choosing. And unfortunately, as you’re seeing, two more festivals [Run to the Sun and The Spring Masked Ball] in Cornwall have just cancelled.”
WIN MORE THAN YOU LOSE
Job believes that Tunes Festivals’ secret to success is having such a passionate team and taking away that “middle man”. Buying assets, removing things like ticket systems, reducing fees, and doing as much as it can itself have helped, too. Without doubt, all of these measures have had a huge impact on operations and ticket prices. This is a big thing for Job, who says that value and affordability are key. He wants to keep ticket prices really low so that his festivals appeal to local residents and tourists visiting Devon and Cornwall and other areas if Tunes Festivals continues to expand.
“We know that people are really tight on money, so we’re keeping everything really low and reasonable,” Job concludes.
“We’ve learned some pretty big lessons in the last few years. But you have to win more than you lose. You have shows that you think are a dead cert but you put them out and they don’t sell. It can be hard to get it right so you have to keep changing things all the time to stay ahead.”
Will Harold, CEO of AMAAD, on the creation of BM Park Live and positioning Boston Manor Park as a sustainable location for more live and large-scale events
JUNCTION 2
There are not many places where you can play underneath a big brutal concrete motorway,” explains Will Harold, CEO of A Man About a Dog (AMAAD), the electronic music event promoter. Harold is talking to StandOut about Boston Manor Park, a large open space situated in the London Borough of Hounslow. The park is home to AMAAD’s Junction 2 festival. It’s here where the promoter works with the site’s many distinctive features –intimate woodland, a lake, oh, and a large, elevated section of the M4 – to create an unforgettable space for festivalgoers.
“I think what’s really unique about this site is that it’s not a flat, green, straightforward park to operate in,” Harold continues. “In many ways, it’s a blessing, and it’s one of the reasons that we’re here, but it does make it challenging and also expensive.”
LONG-TERM AMBITION
Not only is Boston Manor Park home to Junction 2, AMAAD’s existing three-day music festival, but for 2025, the park will also host Paradise In The City, a new one-day event from Paradise Music’s Jamie Jones.
This new addition to the events calendar fits with Harold’s long-term ambition; to deliver more sustainable events in the park that serve more than electronic dance music fans. It’s why AMAAD has launched BM Park Live, a series of live events and a kind of all-encompassing
of Junction 2 and Jones’ new event.
UTILISING INFRASTRUCTURE
BM Park Live aims to raise the bar for live events, but not just electronic music events.
Whilst AMAAD does specialise in electronic music, Harold is keen to develop a series of events that appeal to a wider demographic living in the area. And if this means expanding the offer beyond house and techno, then Harold is up for it.
“The ambition is to do more,” he explains further. “This is a great opportunity to develop a much broader programme and offer additional shows and things that will serve a greater cross section of the community.
“We want to utilise the infrastructure that we have in place,” Harold adds. “The council has expressed a desire to engage local residents and community so that could be mid-week or it could be on the Sunday of our second weekend.”
OPPORTUNITIES
This year, Junction 2 will take place from July 25-27 and Paradise In The City is set for August 2. That means there is an opportunity to host an event on August 3. Or something in-between if AMAAD chose (which to clarify, it hasn’t) to apply for a mid-week licence.
“We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” Harold adds. “We were getting towards it but COVID kind of got in the way.
“Last year, we expanded Junction 2 from two days to three and that went really well. We took a long time to differentiate the individual days into three quite clear music policies within that world of house, techno, and electronic music that Junction 2 is known for. That has given us three slightly different audience profiles. But the thing I think we’ve learned the most, is that by doing the extra day, we’ve been able to spend a bit more money on infrastructure and that has given us the ability to improve the setup and diversify.”
This move is hugely positive. It has meant AMAAD can broaden its offer, which means the promoter can give more tickets to the local community. However, there are further benefits. AMAAD’s takeover of Boston Manor Park over two consecutive weekends means there are more opportunities to learn. Therefore, there are more opportunities to think about sustainability and invest time and resources in things that make both good business and environmental sense.
BRIDGE TOO FAR
“These big events bring a lot of benefits to the community,” Harold comments. “From the council being able to fund the ongoing cost of the park to the wider economy, hotel
bookings and money going into the local area. But we also recognise that the public do lose their use of their park so it’s always about trying to be fair and balanced and reasonable.
“Commercially, we could do three or four weekends at the park and that would be great, but it wouldn’t be a long, healthy, and sustainable relationship and I think three weekends would be a bridge too far.
“We pride ourselves on having a good relationship with local people, and we wouldn’t want to compromise the unique setting. You wouldn’t want to dominate or detract from that so it’s important that we think about how we benefit everyone.”
SUSTAINABILITY PLANS
MLD Event Crew, Safety Geeks, ALS, Wolf Lighting, Video Illusions, Power Revolution, Elite EMS, SRG, Fews Marquees, OBH, AF Live, Wernick Events, Joynes Nash, Showsec, GAP Group, Brighton Marquees, Water Direct, CW Hire, Number8, The Potting Shed, Laser Grafix, Vacant Hire, Command and Control, and Greenbox Events provide event equipment and services to AMAAD, but the promoter
has also engaged live events sustainability consultant Chris Johnson. It is committed to going beyond Net Zero by 2025.
Since 2023, the organisation has been recording as much data as possible and is actively reducing Junction 2’s impact on the planet. Harold says: “We’ve been working on our sustainability plans for a long time and we’re in year three of a three-year sustainability plan. In year one, we looked at what we were doing, what our waste was and how our audience travelled to the show. Last year, we made a lot of changes. For example, we dropped red meat from the menu, we reduced our waste by 13 per cent, our crew catering was 100 per cent vegan, we offset 100 per cent of the energy waste and food emissions, we offset all of the audience, staff and contractor travel, and we banned disposable vapes.”
In 2024, Junction 2’s recycling rates increased from 38 per cent to 75 per cent and the festival worked with Power Revolution to reduce its generator use. Thanks to some detailed planning, AMAAD used two less generators on site than originally planned, it introduced a battery generator system for
production facilities, which reduced its energy use by 70 per cent, and the team powered the site with 100 per cent HVO fuel. This year, AMAAD aims is to improve on those figures.
Harold explains: “We would like to reduce fuel consumption by another ten per cent and we’re looking to use a battery setup to power The Woods stage for the whole weekend.
“We’re also looking at a strict turn off vehicle policy for the site and we’re investigating hybrid solar and battery machinery that we can use to build event infrastructure with.”
SPECIAL ENVIRONMENT
According to Harold, it’s a really exciting time for the promoter, its audience and the artists that are waiting to play underneath the M4 and the “special environment” that is Boston Manor Park. The park’s features are what makes any event that dares to embrace the site’s nuances.
“It’s absolutely what makes the show, and in some ways, it’s what limits the show,” Harold concludes. “In many ways, it means we can’t do everything that we would like to in the park, but it does mean that what we can do, we do in a really unique way.
“Since launching Junction 2, we have long recognised the potential of this site. The launch of BM Park Live will allow us to deliver more high-quality, immersive festivals with higher production values, allowing for even more exciting and ambitious projects.”
WILL HAROLD (he/him)
Big Victory
Event professionals played a key role in special commemorative events to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day
Four days of national commemorations, marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day and the end of the Second World War, took place in London at the beginning of May. A procession, street parties, a service at Westminster Abbey, a flypast, and a concert on Horse Guards Parade comprised some of the poignant events specially arranged to not only honour a generation that showed extraordinary courage but also tell a story of victory and resilience.
Working in partnership with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Identity played a key role in VE Day 80’s procession. It featured more than 1,300 members of the Armed Forces and youth groups, which marched down Whitehall, through Admiralty Arch and up the Mall towards Buckingham Palace.
His Majesty King Charles III and Her Majesty Queen Camilla were joined by WWII veterans and other members of the Royal Family to watch the procession from a specially built platform on the Queen Victoria Memorial – a build overseen by Natalie Reeves, project director at Identity.
TRIED AND TESTED MODEL
Identity was responsible for the full end-toend delivery of the procession – providing event management, full overlay of temporary structures, logistical oversight, public safety planning, and operational control of the day’s activities that concluded with a flypast by the Red Arrows and 23 military aircraft.
The live events agency had just a six-week period to bring together all of these elements,
drawing on its experience of delivering the King’s Birthday Parade and other ceremonial events, such as the King’s Coronation.
‘We’ve got a good knowledge of what that ceremonial footprint looks like,” explained Reeves. “That really helps because we have a sort of tried and tested model. Even though every event has its differences and nuances, we’ve got the foundation so we could mobilise quickly.”
Reeves and her team – which included Mike Kent, ops director, and Phil Bourton, crowd management – choreographed crowd movements, installed asset protection for broadcast infrastructure, delivered a live screen site in Hyde Park for spectators [essentially a crowd mitigation and
contingency option], provided C3 planning, and managed all emergency messaging and audio on the parade route.
“Timings are everything and military precision is a real thing,” said Reeves. “The military’s movements are literally on the button, so we got that locked in first and then everybody else worked around that and built plans out from there.
“Delivering the Coronation really helped us because we worked really hard with stakeholders to understand what their needs were and who needs to be in conversations and part of the decision making process when that planning is happening. When I was planning the procession, that’s definitely something that stuck with me – those open
and honest conversations, getting the right people around the table to find that information or to make a decision and drive it forward, and in the most efficient way.”
Reeves continued: “That’s where I saw the biggest part of my job. I’ve got so many brilliant people that worked on this project that are experts in the events industry and bring so much professionalism and experience to it, in a lot of respects, my job is to make sure that I can let them fly at the roles that they need to do. Be that sort of coordinating point, but really get the most out of them and enable them to do their jobs.”
RECOGNITION
Sunbelt Rentals, ADI, Blackout, Qdos Event Hire, Controlled Events, Pylon One, Instant Marquees, Overlay Events, Provide SESS, JPC Safety, CW Plant Hire, Roadphone NRB, Tracsis Events, KB Events, Igloos, and PTL were just some of the event suppliers contracted to provide equipment and services to Identity, which was under pressure to meet parade timings and the BBC’s on-air schedule. Thankfully, Reeves had the right skills within her team – Emma Stuart, C3, Maz Bryden, ceremonial planning, Adam Daly, production director, Amy Schick, accreditation, Ryan Koolen, deputy project director, Amy Manistre, project coordinator, Rob Madeley, Zone X, and Emma Griffiths, health and safety – to be able to respond to small changes and challenges that come with live broadcast and public events. This was important because Identity had to collaborate with other stakeholders, who were delivering other events that comprised VE Day 80. For example, BBC Events required access to Horse Guards Parade, which hosted a
12,000-capacity concert, rounding off the VE Day 80 commemorations on May 8 in a celebratory tone, echoing how the nation reacted to the news 80 years before.
Reeves explained: “We looked after traffic management across the site, so that supported what the BBC needed to do at Horse Guards. There was definite collaboration on site access because the BBC had to stop some works on the Monday to enable the military to move down Horse Guards Avenue. It was about providing clear information to say that they could access what they needed to deliver their builds and their works, and work with their contractors [such as Star Live] and make sure that all aligned together.”
Jonathan Martin LVO, director, project delivery and major events at DCMS, said: “The 80th anniversary of VE Day represents an extraordinary moment for our nation to honour the remarkable generation who sacrificed so much during the Second World War. But it is also a reminder of the importance of bringing
the country together to ensure our national story is carried down to the next generation and continues to inspire people for years to come. I’m grateful to the team at Identity for their work and support to make this event a success.”
Indeed, VE Day 80 was a reminder that events can unite communities, and preserve stories of resilience, sacrifice, and peace. For Reeves, who comes from a military family, to be involved in the event was a proud moment. She concluded: “I was in event control, in the heart of the action, with all these people out there on the footprint, and radio calls going. Then you’ve got brilliant people that know their jobs and know what they’re doing, delivering it all. It’s often post-event where you get that chance to think, ‘Wow, look what we’ve achieved here’. I know the team are all really proud of that, but to see and hear those veteran stories and see them have a moment to be recognised, I think it’s brilliant and I’m really pleased that we’re able to play a small part in making that happen for them.”
VE DAY 80 CONCERT
Lest we forget...
The 80th Anniversary of VE Day, was a time for many to reflect, it was critical that
Identity was honoured and proud to be the appointed delivery partner for this historic and nationally significant event, supporting the UK Government and the Military in recognising and honouring the many sacrifices made. The event did more than commemorate, it authentically transported audiences across eight decades, celebrating the sacrifice and triumph that shaped modern Britain, and delivering a
As is often the case for these large scale events, Pylon One were selected to build
magine you’re sitting in a lovely pub garden, on a sunny Sunday afternoon [post-event season, let’s keep it real], having a nice conversation with your partner. You’ve got a nice cold drink but as the day goes on, the pub gets busier, it gets noisier and you find yourself shouting. You’re still sitting at the same table, the same distance apart, but you’re having to put a lot more effort in to communicate because of all the ambient noise around you.
This description is the perfect way to explain what happens when a Wi-Fi provider is hanging a lot of your comms plan on unlicensed radio frequencies (RF) that anyone can access. So when all your traders and visitors turn up at your event, turn on their equipment, that environment, that spectrum that you need to communicate in, changes in front of your eyes.
“Any manufacturer broadcasts in those frequencies and your phone is configured to talk in those frequencies, so when you then have lots and lots and lots of devices all broadcasting , listening and communicating, it becomes a problem,” explains Morgan Denton, IT director at RedBox Events. “Your Wi-Fi provider has to be able to deal with that, but some deal with it better than others.”
FUN AND GAMES
Over the years, Wi-Fi has had a bit of a bad name within the events industry, mostly because of interference and the fact that anybody can use an unlicensed RF.
This year, RedBox Events – which counts Plantworx and Southampton Boat Show as clients – is working with Adventure Bike Rider (ABR) Festival to provide a Wi-Fi system that will not only tap into Ragley Hall’s lease line and fibre points but will also use lots of wireless links and heavily-controlled, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi equipment to broadcast the Wi-Fi to several dedicated networks used by production,
Establishing a connection
Wi-Fi and comms are essential to a customer’s event experience and smooth event operations
traders, ticketing and access control. Plus, there will be some hotspots for the public.
Ragley Hall is notorious for its bad phone signal. Over the years, Adventurize, organiser of ABR, has experienced “fun and games” with its Wi-Fi and has struggled to find a provider that understands the site and can get it right.
In 2024, ABR worked with a company that chose to use new equipment on-site that “didn’t work”, putting the event on the backfoot, so for 2025, it has appointed RedBox Events to provide a Wi-Fi solution that will mean the festival can conduct licence checks, traders can trade, and the bike manufacturers can organise test rides.
Becky Brown, festival operations manager, and Alun Davies, chairman at Adventurize, explained that in 2024 a lack of management also hindered Wi-Fi operations. Despite two very “willing” and “hard working” members of staff, whoever shouted at them the loudest – either the man flipping burgers or the bar team – their Wi-Fi issues were being sorted first. There was no management to prioritise any issues in order of importance.
BIGGEST DISASTER
For 2025, Denton and his wider RedBox Events team will be on-site during the event, “doing things differently”, said Davies. The groundwork is already in, more Wi-Fi and equipment is being put in place than previous, but both Brown and Davies feel it’s necessary to do more and compensate guests, retailers, and traders that had a bad Wi-Fi experience last year.
And especially as ABR is growing. This year, ABR will feature 240 trade stands, 50 per cent more than 2024. Davies continued: “We’ve had to give quite a bit of free Wi Fi out to people, to pay them back for last year. There were certain retail stores that had customers but no way of taking payment. That’s the biggest disaster you can have, willing customers and no way of taking their money.”
However, this raises an interesting point. How much are event and festival organisers prepared to pay for Wi-Fi and comms solutions that don’t fall down? And as costs continue to rise, can organisers afford not to pay for reliable coverage?
WEIGHING UP THE COSTS
Dominic Hampton, managing director of Attend2IT, said that he is aware of several organisers conducting a cost analysis –comparing how much money they might lose if the bars went down for an hour against a price increase if they change Wi-Fi providers to a company that can offer a more expensive but better, more reliable service. If it’s more than they would lose, they will stick with the cheaper provider, he said. “The perfectionist in me gets really irritated by it, because that’s really unfair on the punters,” commented Hampton. “But it’s something we’re seeing. People are doing the maths and going, is it really worth spending £10,000 more on having a provider where it doesn’t work one per cent of the time we’re on site?”
Denton explained that it’s a question of quality and that’s a question that only an
organiser can answer. Is the quality worth paying for, or who’s the right person for the job? Yet, as Hampton argued, Wi-Fi is the glue that holds everything together. Therefore, the role it plays and its importance should be recognised.
EDUCATION
Both 2CL Communications and Marathon Communications wish to educate event professionals on comms, and what comms equipment does. For example, Emin Akbay, director at Marathon Communications, thinks that those new to the profession need to consider who needs a radio and who doesn’t. Because when an allocation list starts to change, the day before an event, channels can become overloaded and chaos can ensue; unless comms is given greater priority and thought about earlier when planning.
2CL Communications – which will soon open a new office in Manchester – is now offering organisers radio workshops and is educating event teams on the specifics of what they are asking for. Mike Baker, director of 2CL Communications, and his team are advising ops people on the do’s and don’ts, what happens if cables don’t fit, what to do in X situation, and what Y piece of equipment does. This proactive approach will hopefully stop event professionals reeling off a kit list when they are placing orders for equipment because they will understand what they are asking for and not just copying and pasting a kit list from the previous year.
Baker explained: “The thing with the radio is, you turn up on site and you get a radio and it works, but there’s a lot of stuff behind that to make it work. But people don’t see that.”
MOTOROLA MINDSET
This year, 2CL Communications has redesigned a comms system for Motiv UK’s Etape Caledonia, incorporating additional
radio channels because of the event’s remote location. It will also be working at the British GP, supporting some of the event’s traffic management team with radio comms.
The company has just purchased 700 new Motorola radios that will be used at Glastonbury. However, as the price of Motorola radios has risen by more than 40 per cent since 2021, Baker is looking to invest in other radio brands – that are just as reliable and capable as Motorola – but don’t come with the same price tag.
Again, it’s about education, changing people’s mindsets to think about a different brand of radio, almost like encouraging people to step away from an iPhone and consider Android, because the price point is more affordable for organisers that are increasingly concerned about budgets.
AMAZON’S ANSWER TO STARLINK
2CL’s investment in new radios demonstrates a commitment to offering organisers choice. But it’s not the only comms company to look at new solutions. Marathon Communications has invested in Sennheiser Bluetooth headsets and Motorola digital base/control radios. Likewise, both Hampton and Denton confirmed that they are looking to invest in Kuiper, which is Amazon’s answer to Starlink, but that solution will probably not be available until 2026.
On April 28, United Launch Alliance launched the first 27 Kuiper satellites into space, marking the start of a full-scale deployment of Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite network.
Amazon wishes to put more than 3,000 satellites in space so it can offer fast and “affordable” broadband and it’s thought that three different Kuiper dishes (small, medium, and large) will be available to purchase, with the medium and large dishes expected to rival Starlink.
Hampton described Kuiper as a gamechanger because it will give organisers
“Every event runs more smoothly because of them. 2CL is the radio comms partner every event organiser needs.” Operations Manager, Spartan / Tough Mudder Events
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access to two systems that are completely comparable in terms of technical throughput, but they’re from two completely separate providers, and “as long as the whole of space doesn’t just suddenly disappear”, one of them will work on-site.
PASSWORDS
Like Denton, Arber Lleshi, senior IT technician at One World Rental, concurred that organisers’ top concerns centre around bandwidth sufficiency for high-density crowds and multiple device types, network reliability, and seamless roaming. Therefore, it is investing in Ubiquiti’s full Wi-Fi 7 line-up (U7 Pro, U7 Lite, U7 Outdoor) for higher capacity and coverage, expanding Satellite integration for rural, outdoor, and backup scenarios, and is deploying next gen 5G routers with multi-SIM and eSIM support for rapid failover and mobile deployments. This is because organisers are raising questions around Wi-Fi that enables seamless guest access, wider WiFi deployments, and access point density.
Hampton continued: “At a lot of our events, we’re using WPA2 and WPA3 enterprise and because it’s an enterprise solution, everyone gets a unique username and password. Pretty much everyone’s doing it this year because what tends to happen is the production team will print out the Wi-Fi password, stick it on a wall, and then everybody jumps on it.
“We’ve had problems with festivals in the past where the production network’s been designed to hold, say, 1,000 people, and you’re getting 6,000 people [especially traders] on it, because the password gets out. We’ve then gone to production and said, ‘We’re going to have to change the password, otherwise your network’s going to suffer’.
“I’m always very careful about saying stuff like that because it makes us look bad, but things like that annihilate the network, because it’s not been designed to take that much traffic.”
PROPER PLANNING
Efficient Wi-Fi and comms systems need proper planning, and require organisers to be honest about numbers, otherwise networks will be under intense pressure. For this to happen, collaboration is needed.
Tulleys Farm recently engaged Wall to Wall Communications to deliver a new Wi-Fi and comms solution that could cope with a growing portfolio of events. In particular, Tulleys Tulip Fest, which now runs across three sites.
“We’ve been doing their comms and helping them grow as they started using more of their land for events,” said Sam Cohen, CEO of Wall to Wall. “Last year, they started Tulip Fest and it has become so popular that they expanded the festival across three sites so they now have one in Birmingham, one near St Albans, and one in Sussex.
“The festivals are literally in the middle of a field, so between us and their techie guys, we have probably spent about a month designing a system that has a three-way IP link between the three sites. This all feeds back to the main control room at Tulleys, so they can talk on an operational channel between the sites with almost zero lag.”
SERVICE AND SUCCESS
This year, Wall to Wall is also working with We Are Production on FixFest, a new 5,000-capacity music festival/trade show hybrid aimed specifically at trades people. Callum Wachowski, director of We Are Production, is producing the event and has engaged Amanda Mansergh, director of GEM Events, who runs operations at Screwfix Live, to support We Are Production with FixFest’s trade and expo elements.
Wachowski believes FixFest requires a “comprehensive” network for the event to be a success. Hence, he has contracted Wall to Wall to work alongside the We Are Production team, utilising CCTV masts and a mesh Wi-Fi network.
Again, the solution has required some planning. Something which Marathon’s Akbay also does to ensure his clients receive the best service. For example, Akbay has been working with TriBourne Multisport Events to help it enhance comms coverage across some of its mass participation events.
He explained: “TriBourne Multisport Events approached us having experienced issues covering the long-distance bike legs of two of their events. The previous supplier had provided back to back radios which didn’t reach much further than the seafront [in Eastbourne].
“We let them trial our LTE (Long Term Evolution) radios, which resulted in much-improved coverage. Hence, at the Eastbourne Triathlon Festival, they will be utilising a hybrid of LTE radios for widearea coverage of the bike course, and conventional digital radios for the swim/run and local management.”
SECRET SAUCE
According to Akbay, LTE gives an organiser wider coverage without having to install additional infrastructure. For smaller events or those on tighter budgets, it’s a much more cost-effective solution than trying to put multiple masts and repeaters in, he said. Currently, costs and the price of Wi-Fi and comms equipment is clearly an issue for everyone involved in events. But what’s the most important thing about an effective comms/Wi-Fi strategy and plan? What’s the secret sauce?
“It’s all about preparation,” concluded Akbay. “There’s certainly no pressure to have everything finalised months in advance, because a reputable provider understands things change, but if you’ve got a good idea of what you need to begin with, it certainly helps. And then you’ve got a pretty good, fixed idea of how much things are going to cost.”
RAGLEY HALL
Need radios?
Talking the walk at events
Simon Weldon, operations manager at Sunbelt Rentals, explains why reliable communications infrastructure plays an important role in ensuring events run smoothly
hether it’s a city-wide event or a music festival, clear communication between teams is crucial. With so many moving parts from logistics to security and traffic control to medical support, a fast, coordinated response is only possible with the right equipment and networks in place.
Any breakdown in communication could lead to delays, confusion or, at worst, a risk to safety, so putting trust in a supplier that has the right equipment and the expert knowledge should be top of an organiser's to-do list.
TRIED AND TESTED
While what is considered to be the big-ticket items such as lighting and security barriers can be planned well in advance, communications equipment is often a last-minute consideration. Why? Because confirming final numbers and requirements can be tricky.
Our nationwide distribution network, along with experienced teams that deliver, set up, demonstrate, and log equipment mean that event organisers know they can rely on us for any last-minute requirements and changes.
Reliable communications and connectivity are the backbone of a successful event. From initial build, when plans often change from the original specification to entry systems, crowd management, medical emergencies, crisis control and much more, having the right kit is crucial.
We continually invest in the latest radios, CCTV, headsets, repeaters, and bodycams, which can be monitored and managed by our experts or event teams from our tailored command centres on or off-site. Connectivity and coverage are assessed and addressed through our Wi-Fi solutions, with both 4G and Starlink options available.
PLANNING FOR SUCCESS
Over the last 35 years, I have seen first-hand how strong communication networks make a real difference to every aspect of an event and I still feel a great sense of pride and satisfaction when I go home at the end of the day. Live events move fast, and our job is to make sure communication never falls behind. It is impossible for organisers to plan for every challenge they may face during an event, but they can plan how the team will respond. A solid communications system backed by experts with a solid track record can give organisers the edge when it comes to getting the job done.
SIMON WELDON (he/him)
New moo-ves
The Great Yorkshire Show’s Rachel Coates on how the agricultural show is using digital methods to spread its message and entice a new audience
orkshire Agricultural Society, the organiser of the Great Yorkshire Show (GYS), has revealed two new digital developments to this year’s event.
Visitors to the four-day show will benefit from a new GYS app whilst a new YouTube series will shine a spotlight on some of the exhibitors and contributors who make the annual show a success.
Rachel Coates, show director of GYS, explained: “ The Great Yorkshire Show app is new for this year and has been introduced to help visitors plan their day and navigate the showground more easily. There’s an interactive showground map and in the coming months, details of trade stands and shopping will be added, which we hope will really enhance the visitor experience.”
GYS welcomes more than 140,000 visitors each year and features more than 1,000 exhibitors. Yet, despite big figures, it is conscious that it needs to attract and appeal to new audiences if it wants to secure its future. Hence, for the first time, it is rolling out behind the scenes content via a dedicated GYS YouTube channel, featuring
a series of clips that focus on the exhibitors, competitors, and volunteers who help make the popular show possible.
Coates said: “Although this is my first year as show director, I have attended the show for many years and it has been fascinating to see how it moves with the times while retaining all its traditional values of showcasing the best our fantastic farmers and associated agriculture sectors offer.
“I am committed to spreading this message far and wide and I am particularly keen to engage younger people so our developments this year are fantastic.”
According to Coates, the show’s organising team is constantly examining ways to reach new audiences. For example, in the past, the show has produced a series of podcasts, so developing its YouTube offering was a natural progression. Coates continued: “Previously, we have shared daily highlights at the end of each day of the show. but we’ve never shown what goes on behind the scenes. It’s a really exciting story to tell which we think people would love to see! Not only that, but it also allows our exhibitors, stewards and
competitors to share their stories to a whole new audience.”
The show has livestreamed its main ring content since 2016. Now, the show’s main ring livestream attracts an average of 10,000 viewers on YouTube each day, with people tuning in from around the world – including Australia, Germany, and Japan. It is hoped that the new YouTube content – produced by Multimedia Management – will not only build on these figures but also serve as an extension of the Great Yorkshire Show. It will offer those who can’t attend in person a chance to experience the excitement, and give visitors a behind-the-scenes look at what makes the show so special.
Coates concluded: “YouTube remains one of the most popular social media platforms and one of the most visited websites in the world, with more than 54.8 million adults in the UK using the platform. Our channel offers exhibitors a space to share their stories, and we hope these stories will inspire the next generation of farmers. There’s a rich variety of wonderful and truly inspiring stories, and we can’t wait to share them with everyone.”
Danco International looks back on 50 years in the events industry, supplying visually stunning structures to loyal customers
025 sees the 50th anniversary of Danco International – one of the country’s leading marquee hire companies. It recently celebrated this milestone in style at Badminton Horse Trials with a spectacular hospitality pavilion and more than 250 invited guests.
Born out of Dann Catering, a small business started in 1967 by Mervyn and May Dann, the company has grown and evolved. It was incorporated in 1975. In the same year, it launched the Danco Hire (Bristol) side of the business and rebranded in 1992 to Danco International, cementing its position as a leading marquee, tent, and temporary structure specialist.
Today, the business remains family owned and operated. In 1992, Adrian Dann – son of Mervyn and May – was appointed managing director and his son Jamie Dann is now operations director of Icescape, Danco’s sister company, providing real ice rinks to events throughout the UK.
Although rooted in the west country (based on the outskirts of Bristol), Danco works nationwide.
Adrian Dann said: “In our 50 years, we have had experience of working at nearly every major county show showground in the country, major festival sites such as Glastonbury, Reading and Wilderness along with a number of historic houses such as Hampton Court Palace, Badminton, Burghley, Tatton Park, Blenheim Palace, Ragley Hall and Belvoir Castle to name a few. The depth of experience in our sales and operations staff is second to none with many staff members having worked with the company for more than 20 years.”
TAILORED TO YOU
Danco was one of the first companies in the UK to erect an aluminium frame (clearspan) tent back in 1981 at Badminton Horse Trials. It provides clients with high quality structures from leading manufacturers, but in 1989, the company also started to manufacture its own aluminium frames. Today, it boasts a substantial portfolio of clearspan structures ranging from small 3m wide frame right up to 40m wide frame. And all can be tailored to suit using a range of flooring options, hard walling, glazed walling, soft walling (both white and clear) as well as clear roof options, radial ends, wood walling and linings.
What’s more, Danco has one of the largest hire stocks of pagoda (Chinese hat) structures available in 3m, 4m, 5m, and 6m sizes. Their distinctive shape makes them perfect for creating food and drink outlets, a retail village, or hospitality areas with a harmonious look.
STRUCTURES WITH IMPACT
The acquisition of Yeo Paull Bros back in 2001 brought a rich history of more than 100 years of traditional rope and pole marquee expertise into the business. Today, Danco still has a significant quantity of 40ft wide and 80ft wide traditional marquees. Indeed, Danco is one of the few marquee companies that has a traditional 80ft wide marquee within its extensive portfolio. With its vintage styling and impressive height of more than 8m, these structures create a significant visual impact at any event or festival.
Its large stock holding, along with its permanently employed site foremen and
senior crew members, large warehousing facility, its own fleet of arctics and experienced sales and operational support staff, mean that Danco is able to service several large events at the same time without any issue. For example, this May, the company supplied tentage to Badminton Horse Trials, RHS Malvern Spring Festival, Devon County Show, Royal Bath and West Show, and the team has also started building structures at Royal Cornwall Show.
VITAL SUPPORT
However, county shows are not Danco’s only market. From flower shows to sporting events, university graduations, school speech days, society weddings, festivals, temporary storage marquees, scout jamborees, and ice rink covers, Danco has supplied them all. Indeed at many high-profile and national events – London 2012 Olympics and Torch Relay, Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, 2018 Volvo Ocean Race Stopover Cardiff,
2019 Homeless World Cup Cardiff, and 2024 D-Day Commemorations in Normandy, Danco has been in the background, quietly working away, providing vital supporting tentage infrastructure.
HIGH STANDARDS
Best practice and safety have always been at the heart of Danco’s philosophy. In 1984, Danco joined MUTA – the trade association that promotes best practice within the marquee hire industry. Adrian Dann has served as its chairman and as an executive committee member for many years and he is one of a select few inducted into the MUTA Hall of Fame. Furthermore, in 2011, Danco was one of the first marquee companies to become a CHAS accredited contractor.
But recognition and professional standards do not stop there. With sustainability and the reduction of carbon footprint an increasing focus, all Danco’s equipment is designed with
longevity in mind and the company has just achieved the Certified Carbon Gold Award for acting positively on climate change, too.
PROFESSIONAL APPROACH
As for most companies, the 2000’s have been a rollercoaster. Foot and mouth in 2001, the financial crisis of 2008 and the pandemic; Danco has weathered them all thanks to determination, its loyal team of staff, and also the understanding of its loyal customers. Loyalty, customer relationships, and staff who care about each job, however large or small, are a key part of Danco’s ethos. Reliable, professional, efficient, attentive, hard working, and supportive. These are the words that crop up time and time again when clients describe their experience of working with Danco.
Beverley Laurie, senior project manager at Danco, said: “We like to feel we work hand in hand with our clients as part of their team. Our clients really value the relationships
we build with them and the attention they receive. Our on-site staff are particularly well thought of and many clients are keen to work with the same foreman year after year because the foreman becomes an essential part of their on-site team. We back up our on-site crews with an experienced operations and warehouse team and as we run our own fleet of arctics, we are not reliant on thirdparty hauliers for delivery. The value our clients place on this working relationship is shown by the number of long-term multi-year contracts that we have in place.”
Danco is looking forward positively to what the future holds and is always keen to discuss and explore new possibilities with prospective clients.
For more information, or if you would like to talk to a member of the Danco team about your temporary structure requirements, visit www.danco.co.uk, email info@danco.co.uk or call 01454 252218.
LIVE EVENTS & SAFETY MANAGEMENT
Better together
Could working with a “competitor” open new doors and help your business grow? Event production companies discuss why mutual respect and trust will
e’ve worked for Brighton Pride for some time and every year, we have delivered more and more,” says Joe Nichols, managing director of NW Live. Nichols is talking to StandOut about the production company’s new contract win. To deliver Brighton Pride’s Pride on the Park, a highlight of the city’s events calendar.
“We started doing site infrastructure, we were delivering the parade with Annie [Chebib] from Select Security and Stewarding, then we delivered the street party in its entirety. About five or six years ago, we just kind of mopped up stuff that didn’t really have a home which we then looked after and it became more formalised,” Nichols adds.
“In autumn, we were asked if we would be interested in tendering to deliver Pride on the Park, so we pitched for it with a bit of a vision and a bit of a structure, to move it forward for the next few years, and we won.”
NW Live has a one-year contract with Brighton Pride and together, they will see what happens once the 2025 event is complete. Till then, Nichols and has team are busy finalising plans and contractors, having won the contract at the end of January.
“The event has been a really good event for a very long time, and I think the previous production suppliers have done an amazing job,” Nichols continues. “I think we’ve just brought a fresh set of eyes to the event and we’ve come at it with a new look in terms of site design, stages, and stage production.”
WIN WIN
Site and Stage, Yes Tents, A&J Big Tops, Site Event, Brooks Marquees, and Serious Stages are just some of the suppliers contracted to work on Pride on the Park. NW Live is in a great position to be able to negotiate terms because it is also responsible for delivering On the Beach, which takes place just three weeks before Brighton Pride. Nichols, therefore, has bargaining power to do a better deal, creating efficiencies for all involved.
“There are lots of opportunities for us to negotiate with suppliers,” Nichols comments. “We’re moving kit 1,500 metres but ask me again in October how well it’s gone.”
He laughs. But in all seriousness, it is a good opportunity for all suppliers to work closely together, he says. A win for everybody.
SHARE IDEAS
Nichols confirms that he is actively looking to grow the business over the next three years and has spent time honing in on what NW Live does, its internal systems and processes, as well as event delivery. He has developed relationships with a large freelancer network, resourcing heavily to deliver the company’s growing portfolio of shows. However, he regularly talks with Method Events and The Fair, believing that it’s good to have other production companies as a soundboard.
“We all talk to each other and have a really positive relationship,” comments Nichols. “I think it’s just quite nice to have someone else
to talk to, just to run an idea past. We’ve all got similar challenges in terms of what we’re trying to deliver for our clients, whether it’s resourcing, whether it’s costs, so it’s good to be able to talk to other people about it and see if they’ve got good ideas, and we’re always happy to share ideas based on our experience, too.”
SHARED VALUES AND PURPOSE
This open approach to collaboration is inspiring. Independent production companies are working together more because they recognise there can be benefits by joining forces.
For example, Steve Cunningham, director of 20-20 Events, has a close working relationship with PB Solutions. Both
companies share a similar approach to working on events, says Cunningham and he often calls PB Solutions’ Pete Bentick for advice or knowledge. And vice versa. “We have a strong mutual trust and respect and
most of all, enjoy working together, despite there being an obvious overlap in what we do,” says Cunningham.
Jack Saward, director of Saward Marketing and Events, concurs. “On large-scale outdoor events, collaboration isn’t just helpful, it’s essential,” Saward explains. “Overlay projects bring together the best in the business, from all corners of the industry, and once we’re on site, it’s not about logos or job titles, it’s about coming together as one team to deliver something brilliant, safely and on time.
“I’ve worked alongside people I’d usually compete with, but in those moments, it’s not about competition, it’s about shared purpose. That level of mutual respect and professionalism is what sets the events world apart in my humble opinion.”
FACES BEHIND THE NAMES
Chris Hayter, production manager at Judgeday, is a fan of open and honest conversation. He believes that as cost pressures increase, the number of promoters looking to site share will increase, too. Inevitably, that will see more event production companies working alongside each other. That’s why he values Event Production Network (EPN), a networking club that encourages event production companies to meet in person and to talk openly and respectfully to assist in creating better industry standards. It’s an opportunity to put faces to names and meet the human behind a business.
“You can always learn a bit more from other people and I’d say it’s a very small industry, so a collective resource is always stronger, isn’t it?” explains Hayter. “But sometimes it’s just reassuring when you chat, to hear how we all have the same kind of fears and the same concerns and the same issues.
“Until you meet someone they are a name and a company or a show and you sort of sometimes, perhaps lose the human side,” Hayter continues. “Then you remember that we’ve all ended up in this industry for a reason. That probably means we’re like-minded so the more you talk, in less formal situations, the better and that’s how I’ve met most people at Event Buyers Live (EBL), around the table or having had a couple beers.”
MEMORABLE MOMENT
EBL, the annual hosted buyer event for live events professionals, is where Clare Goodchild, project director at We Organise Chaos, and Craig Mathie, managing director of Project 30, decided to work together.
“I remember the very moment I met Craig,” Goodchild recalls. “We were all dressed up at EBL, ready for dinner, and Craig told me he had left Bournemouth 7s. I instantly told him we were going to work together, even though I wasn’t sure what project it would be on! It panned out that soon after that we needed someone to come into We Out Here and Craig had the perfect experience, approach, and values to fit well in the team.”
GOOD FIT
On We Out Here, Goodchild works as the festival director and Project 30 provides an operations team across the show. Both parties have clear roles, but it helps that they share a similar approach to work, and love a “very organised system”, explains Goodchild.
She continues: “What’s the secret to collaboration and not stepping on each other’s toes? Define the roles. There are times when I could do Craig’s job and Craig could do my job, but you have to respect that person to deliver their scope and not project
CHRIS HAYTER (he/him)
CLARE GOODCHILD (she/her) AND CRAIG MATHIE (he/him)
your own delivery style onto something. It’s also key to create an environment where you can discuss and offer feedback if something isn’t working. Both Craig and I structure our companies with this in mind anyway, so it is a good fit in that respect.”
Mathie agrees. He says the key lies in effective communication, defined roles, and trust. He says: “Clare is the boss but she has always been very generous in supporting when required and allowing me to do things my way at other times. Alongside this, we share lots of laughs and ideas through the planning cycle, which I know that I find incredibly helpful.
“But fundamentally, you have to like each other. There is no point trying to work handin-hand if your morals don’t align.”
DEFINE ROLES
As well as working alongside We Organise Chaos, Project 30 also works with Seventa Events on Christmas in Cambridge.
Like Goodchild and Mathie, Simon Brooks, director of Seventa Events, is crystal clear on who’s doing what.
“We’ll usually define roles upfront so nothing gets blurred,” he comments. “We focus on strengths and experience to define those roles. Respecting each other’s strengths is essential. If you can play to each other’s expertise, you create something much stronger than if you go it alone.
“For me, the most important qualities in a collaborative partner are reliability, flexibility, and a no ego mindset. You need to know that someone will show up, do what they say they’ll do, and be open to adapting along the way. We’re all juggling budgets, public safety, and client expectations – it only works if there’s trust.”
DON’T BE A…
Brooks thinks there’s a huge opportunity to embrace collaboration more. He explains: “There’s too much duplication of effort and competition over contracts that could be delivered better – and more sustainably –by aligned teams pooling resources. If we want to continue raising the bar for audiences and clients, that spirit of collaboration is the way forward.”
Jake Warriner, director of SC Productions, is in agreement. SC Productions works with lots of large promoters, working on highprofile tours, in venues, where load in and load out overlaps with other promoters and event professionals. It provides an opportunity to openly share suppliers, resources, and learnings and an opportunity to build trust because, as Warriner says, “if you’re a d*ck to someone, it will always come round to bite you”.
OPENING DOORS
Mathie says that the events industry is full of small businesses who are often competing against mega multi-national organisations, but he genuinely believes there is plenty of work to go around for professional and high-performing businesses. And in some cases, his company stands a better chance of winning business if he partners with someone else. But he also appreciates that collaboration with other event producers isn’t always the right direction for a project, and that’s fine, but in certain situations working alongside another company opens doors you wouldn’t be able to push yourself.
Goodchild concurs: “If smaller agencies can collaborate like we do then it will open doors for everyone. There will be times when We Organise Chaos can’t do a job or Project
30 doesn’t have the capacity, and if we can deliver together then we are opening up new opportunities. For the client, as long as the fit between the two agencies is right, they are getting broader experience and reliable delivery from two companies who are both experts in their own right.”
GROW TOGETHER
Working with other independents can be hugely refreshing and Brooks believes that it fosters an agility and directness in communication, and a willingness to innovate without getting bogged down in corporate red tape. Plus, it keeps things grounded.
Goodchild continues: “If you are bringing someone into the fold, you are opening up your company processes and systems for them to see, so you need to feel confident enough in your delivery that competition doesn’t scare you. I don’t mean being cocky, but just understanding that whilst people can imitate your systems, it’s the relationships, values, and experience that are all unique to each production company. We are all different, and therefore, we all have a different offering to the client. A union of these offerings can really help bring together the best elements of each company.”
But what would Goodchild say to other people who are apprehensive of working in this collaborative way?
“This industry is tough, and it gets tougher when every year, events are swallowed up by the major players,” she concludes.
“Collaborating with smaller companies could open new doors, new ways of thinking, and new developments for both your company and the industry. Don’t be such a closed book – share the knowledge and help everyone grow together!”
TEAM WE OUT HERE
PRIDE ON THE PARK
Success at a local level
Council events teams are under-resourced yet, they still deliver memorable events with limited funds. Here, local authority event organisers shine a light on their roles and challenges
How often have you heard event organisers talk about a “lack of consistency” in a safety advisory group (SAG)? It’s a common conversation and to be fair, grumble, amongst a lot of event directors when one local authority, not scared of hosting events, will let you get on with things and another – less familiar with events – will insist on having more of an input.
Helen Thackeray, chair of the Local Authority Event Organisers Group (LAEOG) and Hull City Council’s events and sports ground safety manager, says that each town
or city – whether it’s coastal, urban or rural –will have its own nuances; expertise within each area will vary greatly. So yes, SAGs will differ, and for good reason.
It’s a topic that LAEOG members regularly discuss, asking each other how they manage the numerous scenarios that crop up during a SAG. Like, event professionals that work in the private sector, council event teams are also trying to navigate a changing events landscape, which is under-resourced and facing huge financial blackholes. But local authority event professionals are also
having to get to grips with their own shifting roles, the “politics” that come with the public sector, assisting external promoters, and – on top of that – delivering their own events.
COMMERCIAL MINDSET
Few council event teams have access to huge event budgets to organise large-scale and free public events. Hence, they must adopt a commercial mindset, prepare business plans and forecast, not knowing where funds are going to come from in the next 12 months let alone in three years’ time.
The frustration is that there is already substantial evidence in the public domain to prove the massive economic, social, health, and wellness benefits that events bring to a local area. For example, Light Night Leeds, organised by Leeds City Council, which is supported on the event by Olympus Crew, has attracted more than 1.1 million visitors and generated millions for the local economy over the past two decades.
Likewise, Sheffield City Council recognises the great impact that events have and has therefore, devised a city-wide events strategy. So, when events do so much, why is there no consistency across the various local authorities when it comes to event funding?
FUNDING
Much comes down to the number of statutory duties that each council has. County councils, district councils and borough councils will each have different responsibilities so, the “pot” has to stretch further as different facilities draw down on any funding.
However, Hull City Council recently revealed that it is investing £1 million into events and culture, with the aim of raising the profile of the city. The development of a new community-led festival is included in the plans along with an increase in events in parks across the city. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Nottingham City Council, which is in special measures. It has zero funds.
“Ten years ago, I think the annual event budget in Nottingham was £400,000 pounds,” explained Patrick Loy, head of Nottingham events and tourism, organiser of Nottingham’s famous Goose Fair. “Since COVID, it’s been zero so we have to generate income to do the bits of commissioned activity we do stage.
“I think one of the reasons I was brought in was with a commercial view. This zerobased budget in Nottingham was a longterm strategic objective back in 2017 that recognised that events provision needed to be, you know, a zero cost base. That’s why we have pivoted now to using the venue assets we’ve got to bring in commercial content to backfill what we’ve lost from a traditional council events programme.”
MAKING EVENTS PAY
Nottingham City Council used to stage Riverside Festival, which welcomed 250,000 people over three days. The event was cut last year and the council is now in conversations with an external operator about its potential return.
Unfortunately, despite some base funding, Loy and his team are reliant on an Arts Council grant and things such as business improvement district (BID) money to commission “quality” work and events, including Nottingham Light Night. For local authorities like Nottingham, BID funding is proving to be a lifesaver; it’s stepping into the void where council money used to be.
But to encourage people to attend events and festivals and to draw people into city centres, for instance, investment is needed. Whether that’s time, money or resources.
SAFE BET
Stephen O’Neill, city events – manager at Aberdeen City Council, said that his city council is looking at introducing a tourism levy. The income generated would be ringfenced for activities that improve infrastructure or could be used for events, such as The Tall Ships Races Aberdeen. O’Neill said: “Financially, local authorities
STEPHEN O’NEILL (he/him)
STACY WILLIAMS (she/her)
NOTTINGHAM GOOSE FAIR
LOCAL AUTHORITY EVENTS
across the board are under quite a lot of pressure. Our events in Aberdeen are separated into a core programme, which is funded from a thing called the Common Good Fund. Then, for things like Tall Ships, which require ad hoc funds, we’ll request funding on an individual business case.
“The challenge we have is that prices are going through the roof, across the board, so we have to have events which are not only safe but are enough to entice people to come.”
RIGHT PARTNERS
Tall Ships Races Aberdeen will take place from July 19-22 and hopes to attract 400,000 people. The main event is free but a standalone concert programme along Aberdeen’s quayside [7,000-cap] will be ticketed and suppliers such as REM Events, Scotia Medical, D&J Catering, and Showsec have been contracted to work on the fourday maritime event.
O’Neill is the event’s operations lead and he explained it’s the biggest event the city’s seen. He is overseeing things such as site design, medical, and traffic management, which have been scaled up to ensure visitors are safe. That’s because the council’s events team comprises O’Neill and three members of staff. O’Neill commented: “It’s going to be an incredible show and it’s a complex event but the thing that gives me comfort is we’ve got the right people in the room with the right competency. I’m sure there’ll be challenges
but what matters, is we’ve got the right skills and partners around the table.”
HOMEGROWN SPECTACLE
Daniel Reynolds, events officer at Aylesbury Town Council, concurred. He contracts reputable suppliers such as Newman Event Services, IPS, Five Star Loos, Augusta Event Services, and Moonlite Productions to provide services and equipment to a portfolio of town events, such as Parklife Weekend, The Aylesbury Games, Aylesbury on Sea, and St George’s Day Historical Fayre and Parade. Council precepts state that funds must go towards events that bring the community together. For example, last year, Reynolds’ team received some funding to deliver a “super co-created” and “homegrown spectacle” and parade. Arts Council funding influenced what the council chose to produce. However, Storm Bert stopped the spectacle being unveiled. Now, there are plans to reveal what is essentially a giant glittering swan on wheels – that lights up – this year and because it cost a lot of money, the swan will become a regular feature of future council events.
GROWING RESPONSIBILITIES
“Many years ago, lots of local authorities had big budgets, but budgets have been cut, and we’ve had to adapt and change the way we work,” explained Stacy Williams, events and partnership development manager, leisure, culture and tourism, at Derby Live, which
supports about 600 events a year across the city, including Darley Park Weekender.
“We’re really lucky that as a council there’s a real focus on promoting and engaging cultural activity to increase vibrancy and footfall within the city centre.
“There’s a lot of development that’s taking place within Derby. For example, Guild Hall Theatre is about to be redeveloped and we’ve been involved in another project called Derby Market Hall. We’re supporting that team to deliver an events programme because it’s all about building an audience.”
Williams said she is enthused by community groups that have fantastic ideas and enjoys helping those who don’t necessarily have the tools or experience to deliver those events. Therefore, it falls within her remit to support those people. However, a major challenge for local authorities is balancing public experience with the legal requirements that come with being an event organiser. It’s a challenge to get the message across, having to explain that some things have to be delivered in a certain way, and why. And with Martyn’s Law looming, and many community events expected to fall in scope, that responsibility will only grow. It’s another thing that is expected to fall on council event teams’ shoulders.
Williams concluded: “As a council events professional, you have a whole array of hats to wear but every year, there’s always a different one.”
NOTTINGHAM WINTER WONDERLAND
Getting a fresh perspective
The 2025 edition of The Boat Race benefited from a fresh perspective and new moves in event control. The Boat Race’s Chris Price reveals all
n April 13, a peak audience of 2.82 million people watched the BBC coverage of The Boat Race 2025. Cambridge University Boat Club completed its second clean sweep in three years, extending the rowing club’s recent dominance on the Thames.
But whilst the sporting event garnered huge amounts of interest on the TV, Londoner’s love of the rowing masterclass did not go unnoticed. As the sun shone, record crowds gathered on a seven kilometre stretch of the River Thames, cementing what everyone in The Boat Race team already knows. That one of the oldest major sporting events continues to captivate the great British public and attract Oxford and Cambridge University alumni, eager to cheer on their respective teams.
COMPLACENCY
For five years, Chris Price, event director of The Chanel J12 Boat Race 2025, has led the event’s operations team. But for 2025, he was joined by Samantha Allen, event manager, appointed to manage day-to-day operations and deliver Price’s plans.
“For me, and from an operational delivery point of view, one of the main things that I wanted to look at this year was complacency,” Price explained. “After doing the event for four years in a row, the same event, the same plan, there was an opportunity for me to
take a look at things a bit more and to bring someone in with fresh eyes and new ideas.
“I didn’t want to just repeat what we’d done before. Someone like Sam, who’s really excellent in the detail, asked questions on why things were done in a certain way, and that enabled us to make many small changes, improving our efficiency and readiness for the event.”
EVENT CONTROL
Price and Allen worked extensively on preplanning and comms, tweaking run sheets, and looking at the best use of everyone’s time and expertise. This resulted in a smoother and more efficient build, which left Price to concentrate on the small, additional things that happened in the run up to the event.
What’s more, Allen’s presence gave Price more time to be fully prepared. Price said: “One of the most important things for race days is that if you know everyone knows what their job is and what their responsibilities are, then you have capacity to deal with things that don’t go to plan.”
This year, those incidents and ad hoc things – such as excessive numbers of Lime bikes blocking access and pedestrian routes – were managed from event control, which benefited from a new layout devised by Controlled Events’ director, Rob Walley.
“Layout-wise, last year, the control room was U-shaped with everyone facing inwards, making things a bit more noisy,” Walley explained. “For 2025, grouping people in pods, with the right people facing each other, made a difference.
CHRIS PRICE (he/him) SAM ALLEN (she/her) and ROB WALLEY (he/him)
“In terms of lines of communication things were a bit easier to manage. You could get up and talk to people if you needed to so that layout freed up a bit of space, which was great because it can be a very busy room.”
FULLY BRIEFED
Price praised the new layout. A small move but one that proved beneficial when teams of people needed to huddle together. There was no need for people to shout over a big table.
Price added: “We were able to work in our silos, but then update each other when things were happening or other people needed to be involved in conversations. It gave Sam and I the freedom to walk around the room and just check in on specific things when we needed to.
“There’s always stuff that happens on race day. In a way, I felt unconnected with what was going on, because I wasn’t having to make loads of radio calls, but it was because everyone knew what they were doing and were feeding that information back through. The cogs were turning without us having to prompt people, ask people to do things or check up on a status. We were getting that information through consistently, and that meant that Sam and I didn’t have a huge amount to ask people or to do on the day. I think that is testament to Sam and her planning and making sure that everyone knew what they needed to do.”
FULLY TESTED
Walley concurred. Small tweaks were made to event control, which made a noticeable difference. This was especially important, because a strong partnership and joined-up approach was required to embrace the new elements that comprised The Boat Race 2025.
For example, The Boat Race expanded its use of Fulham Football Club, which is used for hospitality and for a fan zone. This meant that new organisations and people had to be briefed and welcomed into The Boat Race family. This also increased the number of people on-site and because the sun
BIG CROWDS
was shining, record numbers of spectators descended on the event’s footprint.
Together, Price, Allen and Walley closely monitored the site from event control. Walley continued: “The Boat Race is a very inclusive event that was ready for the numbers that came this year. This is really positive because when you have more people or new activities, your event is really tested and that’s when you know whether your plans stand up well.”
Indeed, with Fulham Football Club’s renovation almost complete, the venue was used more to host race partners. For the 2026 event, taking place on April 4 due to tide times and TV scheduling, Price envisions that the venue will be utilised even more. Plus, next year, he expects the race to develop in other ways, enhancing the event experience for everyone involved.
“This year, we trialled some new data analytics for on-screen graphics,” Price explained. “We added data trackers, like GPS trackers to the boats, so we hope to enhance the viewer experience and demystify some of technicalities of the racing for viewers. We’ll be doing some good work on that over the summer to see what’s possible for 2026.”
Price concluded: “This was also the first year that Chanel sponsored the event.
“It was the first year of a long-term partnership and their first year to understand the event and figure out where they might want to do things. So I think from an event look and feel perspective, it will be really interesting to see what they do next year and how they want to add to the event.”
SUPPLIERS LIST –
Safety – JPC Safety
Event control – Controlled Events
Traffic management – CSP
Barriers – Sunbelt Rentals
Security – Wise Security
Radios – 2CL
Big screens – ADI
Temporary structures – Key Structures
Toilets – Loos for Dos
Staffing – Massive
Site maps – One Plan
Wi-fi – RockIT Networks
Power – Smart Power
Medical cover – St John Ambulance
Catering – Together, Piptree Catering, and Shona Pollock Catering
Branding – Wasserman
THE BOAT RACE
BRADSHAW EVENT VEHICLES
Helping hands
Staffing and volunteer management best practices go under the spotlight
This year, Cheltenham Festivals is celebrating its 80th anniversary. What began in 1945 with three classical concerts at the first post-war Cheltenham Music Festival, has grown into four festival that specialise in jazz, science, music, and literature.
James Clay is volunteer manager at Cheltenham Festivals. He recognises that all four festivals could not function without the input of an unpaid workforce that give up hours and hours of their time to feel enriched by culture and make a difference.
But how does Clay recruit more than 200 volunteers to cover in the region of 640 shifts for Cheltenham Jazz Festival, for example? And how does he retain the more than 500 volunteers that are currently on his volunteer database?
“I joined Cheltenham Festivals six years ago, but I was a volunteer coordinator,” explains Clay, just days after coming off site from Cheltenham Jazz Festival. “Somebody else was doing all of the recruitment and the scheduling. I would then get parachuted in a couple of days before the festival and asked to make things work.
“At the beginning of last year, that person stepped down. Now I oversee every aspect of volunteer involvement and am starting to strategise the volunteer programme.”
COMMUNICATION
One of the first things that Clay changed when he took up the role as volunteer manager was the way Cheltenham Festivals communicated with its network. “I was very
conscious that previously, every single piece of communication with volunteers was an ask,” Clay explains. “We were either asking them to commit to giving their time, or it might be a piece of paperwork they needed to do before they came to site, even the thank you email after a festival would come with the expenses and feedback form.
“I started building some comms that wasn’t an ask. Such as, this is what we’re doing as an organisation, or little clues as to who might be appearing in our programme before it’s public knowledge. All these little things make volunteers feel part of the organisation.”
This wasn’t Clay’s only change. Previously, Cheltenham Festivals had two teams of volunteers – full-time volunteers and the welcome team who are local to Cheltenham. Clay was conscious there was a real disparity between the two teams, and they weren’t sure what the other did. It created a bit of conflict so the two separate teams have gone and now everyone is simply a volunteer.
“This has really helped to unify the entire volunteer workforce, because they now understand and respect each other’s roles,” says Clay. “Previously, I was also adopting the volunteers with a couple of days to go, so I would be scrambling around to fill spaces in the schedule. There was a lot of me asking people to do me a favour but now that we have streamlined things, there’s a lot less need for that now. They know exactly what they’re doing two weeks beforehand and this has been really key in smoothing that volunteer experience.”
TRAINING
Moving forward, Clay is not only keen to encourage more people – from diverse backgrounds and who are diverse in thought – to join the volunteer team, but he also wishes to build on the successful moves that he has made in terms of comms. Especially when Cheltenham Festivals needs volunteers for 33 days of the year.
This is a great example of the professional steps being taken to structure volunteer management and ensure volunteers feel more prepared and knowledgeable when they step on-site.
It’s something that Oxfam Festivals has considered this year because it is now working with Cloud Assess and has launched a training academy. Each festival volunteer is assigned their own dashboard and when they know which roles they will be doing at which events, they will be invited to take part in specific training based on what’s needed.
SMALL TWEAKS
This year, Oxfam has increased the number of volunteers on its database and has slightly changed its model. It is working with more day festivals, rather than multi-day camping festivals, which means the organisation can commit to helping more organisers. This move means that Oxfam can attract more time-poor volunteers who are happy to volunteer but for shorter periods of time.
Similarly, The Power of People is tweaking some of its approaches, too; helping clients to streamline processes, adding value,
increasing efficiencies, and providing flexibility. For instance, it is working with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), on its volunteer programme again this year, centralising the process so it is not run in isolation by each separate tournament team (Birmingham, Eastbourne, Nottingham, and Queen’s).
2024 was the first year that Queen’s ran a volunteer programme. Last year, The Power of People supplied 130 volunteers (each typically working four to five shifts) to the cinch Championships at Queen’s Tennis Club. For 2025, the company will provide 190 volunteers to the event, which now has a new sponsor and is called HSBC Championships.
Tom Bowkett, director and head of projects at The Power of People, is now working with the LTA, building on lessons learned in 2024 to improve operations and the volunteer experience. For example, the volunteers’ base is moving so it looks more welcoming and welfare facilities have been enhanced.
TRAVEL
Bowkett believes there are four groups of volunteers that you have to appeal to. For example, in the world of sports volunteering, there are those interested in sport, there are those who love to be involved in large-scale events, there are people who love to volunteer in event specific roles, such as accessibility or accreditation, and there are students.
The big thing for Bowkett is making sure that he matches people in roles that are going to be more beneficial for what their will to volunteer is. He says: “That’s the big piece – rostering
and allocation. Making sure people get put in areas that are actually going to be beneficial for them. Then one of the things we’ll always look at is travel. How people get to a venue, and cost versus sustainability. We always try to work with whichever council’s involved in an event and see how we can engage the travel providers because there could be a scheme offering free public transport for volunteers.”
COSTS
This is a great move for organisers running events in urban environments. Bowkett comments that the engagement piece can take time and effort but so can sorting individual travel receipts for 200 people!
Sue Torres, director of Wicked Events, and Mike Bell, director of Festivols, both believe that the cost of travel is hampering volunteer recruitment. Torres explains: “I’ve been finding that some volunteers, they can’t even afford the petrol to get to a festival. And that’s the downside, you know. We’re losing some great volunteers because transport, buses, and petrol are very expensive. They can’t afford a ticket so they volunteer, but now volunteers are dropping out because they can’t actually afford to get there, or they’re having to work more to afford the cost of living increases so they can’t take time off.”
MAKE IT FUN AND DIFFERENT
Wicked Events supplies volunteers to The Big Feastival, End of the Road, Vegan Camp Out, and Sidmouth Folk Festival, whilst Festivols is a new venture, specifically supplying
volunteers to sustainability projects and eco events. Bell works alongside Torres and volunteers himself at numerous events. They understand the nuances that come with volunteer recruitment and are appealing to organisers to understand that knowing that you need volunteers but not knowing what you want them for, makes planning and recruitment a challenge. Volunteers want some idea of what they will be doing, so they can plan themselves, and not be anxious about the experience they are going to have.
“Volunteers are all doing a job but they’re just being paid in a different way,” says Bell. “And just because we use the word volunteer doesn’t mean that they’re willing to go and do every single job for all hours.”
Bell and Torres consider themselves to be leaders, not bosses, empowering teams of people to embrace their volunteering roles. Because to them it’s all about encouraging a group of people to evolve into a community that works hard to give festivalgoers and ticketholders a good time.
So what’s the secret to good volunteer management? “Comms,” concludes Clay. “Have a voice and make it personal. If you are extremely corporate when dealing with your volunteers, you are an organisation. You’re not a person.
“Wherever you can use their name, wherever you can include something about them, wherever you can, make it fun, make it different. When it’s personal, it feels like they’re with friends and they’re helping you to deliver something special.”
TOM BOWKETT (he/him) THE POWER OF
sales@dcrs.co.uk www.dcrs.co.uk
ACCESSIBILITY & INCLUSION
Eventwell
T: 0800 470 0958
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W: EventWell.org
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