PRODUCTION PROFILE: Hove Festival
Below: Dan Macbean, Dougie Murphy, Mark Sunderland, Andrew Sween; Sustainability Coordinator, Fredrik Eive Refsli with some of his team; Festival Republic’s Nick Davies; Per Marius Larsen of Bright Group; Siyan Lighting’s Hove festival crew.
considerable festival touring set. The great thing here is we ‘flip flop’ between the stages so the crews have at least an hour and three quarters on changeovers. “This year Bright have talked me into changing to Meyer Sound boxes and they have worked out well,” said Davies. Heading a team of six at Hove, Siyan’s Steve Finch coordinates between Festival Republic, Nick Davies and all the incoming acts to adhere to their lighting and rigging requirements. He told TPi: “It’s more economical to source the equipment locally through Bright Group. If they haven’t got exactly what we want, they come back with alternatives and we find a happy medium of what we require for the show to work. “I produce all of the technical drawings for the artists for the fixtures and deal with some of their requests, then coordinate between us and the bands to make it work.” Per Marius Larson from Bright Group added: “For sound here on the Amfi stage, we have 16 Meyer Sound Lyon cabinets per side along with 1100 LFC Meyer Sound subwoofers. We also have an Avid Profile console at FOH, a Soundcraft Vi6 console on monitors, and a Turbosound TFM-450 for cabinets onstage. On the main stage we have 32 of the new Meyer Sound Leo cabinets, with an Avid Profile console and the same monitors, and we use Lab.gruppen PLM 20,000Q amplifiers throughout. “We have a lighting kit list based largely on last year, and adapted to what’s coming in. On the Amfi Stage we have BL3000 spots and we have the new Martin Quantum wash, which they are lending to us for testing. I’m 68
very happy with them. On the main stage we have 20 MAC Viper Profiles, 16 MAC Aura LED fixtures and eight Atomic 3000 DMX strobes from Martin, along with 14 Philips Vari-Lite VL3500 washes, 16 Clay Paky Sharpys, eight ETC Source Fours and 14 Blinders from James Thomas, all controlled by a GrandMA2 light from MA Lighting. “We have quite a lot of gear but obviously it’s been high season, and we’ve got lots of other festivals too, not just Hove. Getting late requests for equipment can be really difficult. I got a request from a band last Thursday for equipment that came from Sweden, which isn’t that easy.” A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE Frederic Eive Refsli is the Sustainability Coordinator at Hove, responsible for the environmental initiatives and raising awareness through communication, both inside and outside the organisation, that remain a central ethos. The festival has ‘environment stands’ where the audience can ‘sell their recycled waste’. Eive Refsli explained: “Over the past three years we have made the stands more prominent, raising the issue of reducing our carbon footprint and keeping this island clean. We have been able to market the environmental stands much better by creating ‘wheels of fortune’ to act as an extra incentive for people to hand in their rubbish. The ‘wheel’ works in this way: people hand in their green sacks of recycled waste and in payment they are allowed to spin the wheel of fortune. You can win a range of gifts and experiences, such as back stage tours, which are the popular ones.” Eive Refsli continued: “Having
knowledgeable, passionate people creates a much better experience for the guests to come to the environment stands, plus they’re proactive on getting off the stands and encouraging recycling. “I think one of the other things that I have been contributing to the organisation is a wider awareness; I don’t have to be the watchdog all the time. Across the festival organisation, people from all sections have come to me with ideas and to discuss new initiatives much more than they used to. “In 2009 we started working on connecting to the national grid, and slowly started phasing out diesel generators, so that by 2011 we were able to ban diesel generators from the site; there are no diesel generators onsite now. Given that Norway’s electricity is the cleanest in Europe, produced via hydro electric generation and burning rubbish, Hove’s fuel footprint is tiny. So being off the grid is huge.” “This year we welcomed the Government Minister for the Environment, along with heads of business and environmental organisations, for a discussion at our Flekken stage site in the forest. These discussions not only inform but bring together different sides of the community to challenge and debate. Having the minister here this year meant that we also attract even wider interest outside of the festival in the national media, so the issues are being publicised very well. Awareness is a key goal.” TPi www.hovefestivalen.no www.stages.co.uk www.festivalrepublic.com www.siyan.co.uk http://brightgroup.dekodes.no