Recently arrived at industry specialist PR agency JGP, Noelle Lane brings a background in IT - with some media experience tucked away. With a keen interest in music and songwriting, Noelle will work as PR assistant alongside Jerry Gilbert. She says she is relishing the challenges ahead. "I’m really excited about entering an industry where my personal interests overlap those of business. I feel I’m finally embarking on a career worth getting out of bed for."

PLASA has completed the first phase of its major industry research project, which will provide PLASA members with an invaluable insight into their industry. As well as being able to estimate the global market size for professional lighting, sound, staging and AV products and services, the research also gives a very detailed picture of the market in the UK. For the first time, PLASA has information about the value of the product sectors, how fast they are growing and the size and growth of the various vertical sectors into which its members sell. The findings enable the Association to say some very precise things about its members collectively and the nature of the industry as a whole.

PLASA plans to repeat the exercise every 12 months, enabling it to build up ever-more accurate trend information. A quick flick through the 119-page report reveals that it estimates the respective size by

This summer saw a free concert for 20,000 people staged in the busy heart of London. Mike Mann discovered that such a production has its logistical difficulties . . .

Before even thinking about the problems involved in bringing central London to a standstill, Star Hire’s Roger Barrett realised that the stage design for the Africa Day concert would have to be an unusual one: "We would normally have built a higher stage than this - but a major feature of the design was that the famous lions should be visible on stage." Two of the huge statues were incorporated into the stage, which was positioned just in front of Nelson’s Column, facing northwards towards the National Gallery. Flanked by the South African Embassy (who funded the entire event) and Canada House, the central area of Trafalgar Square itself also needed treatment. "One of the first things we realise

The Association of British Theatre Technicians (ABTT) has announced that it intends to appoint an Honorary Archivist. The archivist will be responsible for collating the association's own papers as well as the drawings, audio and video tapes, etc, which form the ABTT's historical collection. The post is honorary, although a budget is available to enable the work to be carried out. For further information please contact Howard Bird, Executive Director, ABTT, 47 Bermondsey Street, London, SE1 3XT.

The Dickson CyberExpress is a 21st century retail concept, first launched in Hong Kong last autumn. The HK$380m investment by the Dickson Group of Companies has resulted in a 70,000sq.ft, high-tech development at Kowloon Station.

It’s a full-on interactive shopping environment, offering a wide selection of the best known brands in the universe. The ‘cybermall’ functions as a complementary intelligent retail centre to Dickson’s e-commerce venture, DicksonCyberExpress.com.

The idea was to create the ultimate consumer experience for cyber-chic shoppers. The team chosen to pull the project together included UK-based design and production company Media Projects International, retail designer JGA Inc from the US, Hong Kong architects Gensler, UK-based AV systems specialists Electrosonic and various LDs and directors.CyberExpress’s seven ‘zones’ inc

The PSA launched its latest initiative for those working within the Entertainment & Events industry. The aim of the Register - called Skill Base - is to provide all operatives with the opportunity to obtain recognition of their skills and qualifications, and to provide evidence to a contractor or employer of their ability to do a job competently and safely.

The creation of the Register is also intended to help counteract some of the problems facing the industry, such as declining employment, skills shortages, lack of training, poor health and safety records, and an unfavourable public image. The Register will set agreed industrial skill standards, based on qualifications and experience, which are being established in co-operation with trade associations and employers across Europe. This will further enhance the new International groups being established by the PSA in Ireland, Holland

PLASA held its most successful AGM to date on Thursday 14 June in the stunning setting of Coombe Abbey, near Coventry. Just under 70 Members attended, including for the first time, a number of Associate Members.

During the AGM, both PLASA Chairman Mick Hannaford and Treasurer Sammy de Havilland reported a successful year for the Association, covering the range of initiatives that had been introduced in the past 12 months. In his keynote speech Chairman Mick Hannaford reflected on the changes taking place within the industry and the need for companies to equip themselves to cope with a rapidly changing world. He emphasized the role that PLASA had to play in this and also stressed the need for more training, an ambition that the Association has given a further boost to with the recent establishment of its training and education steering group. In a reference to the increasing concern abo

In true Vegas-style, Tomcat unveiled its new Las Vegas office in mid May. The grand opening of the new office in the Western region of the United States lasted the entire afternoon with over 40 representatives from surrounding companies and various media visiting the new facility. The new site will carry over 200 sections of standard truss products in stock at all times, as well as over 50 Columbus McKinnon Lodestar motors and various rigging accessories. The new office comes hot on the heels of the opening of Storm at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino where the Tomcat family of companies manufactured essential parts of the special effects. The new office is located in an industrial section of Las Vegas at 4020 Ali Baba Lane, Bldg D Suite A about two miles off the Southwest end of Las Vegas Boulevard. The office consists of two staff members, Sharon Ozzolek, sales assistant, and Brian Wis

Bytecraft announced recently that whilst earlier this year it had injected much needed capital into UK company Caire Ltd, in order to protect staff and creditors of that company it was now putting Caire into liquidation. "Bytecraft feels that liquidation is the only responsible course of action," said general manager John Rowland in London. "Because of a long-standing relationship with the Caire parent company, and also because we had bid several projects with Caire Ltd, we felt we needed to help the company when it ran short of funds," Rowland added.

Earlier this year, Bytecraft has injected £60,000 into the troubled company and had, in fact, been implementing Stage 5 of its international strategy that called for a permanent presence in the UK. An investment position in Caire Ltd added value to the opening of a UK daughter company Bytecraft Europe with potential

Music with walls? Music without instruments? is the title of an international conference attended by 100 delegates and speakers from Europe and the US. The conference opens today at the De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester and runs until Saturday.

"This is a high-level conference where we will be looking at the future of how music is composed and technological and music innovations," said Professor Andrew Hugill. He is one of the conference organisers, along with Professor Leigh Landy who heads the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Group at DMU. The conference will feature musical installations, listening posts, an internet station for interactive music-making, and musical performances at Phoenix Arts, Leicester. There will be four concerts and six installations throughout the conference, including ‘Time Drops’ by Akemi Ishijima - a continuously runni

Pan-european AV equipment rental company Heuvelman Ltd, has opened a London office. Using the latest equipment, Heuvelman supply a wide range of businesses including hotels, broadcasters, corporate clients, conference and event venues with technical equipment ranging from a single projector to full state-of-the-art installations. Voting systems, teleconferencing and IT rental are also supplied by the company.

At the ABTT Show earlier this year, Technical Standards for Places of Entertainment - a document addressing the standards facing our industry - was launched.

We all know that local licensing authorities impose technical requirements to ensure the safety of the public, staff and performers in places of entertainment such as theatres, cinemas, discotheques, nightclubs and concert halls. An overhaul of these requirements has been long overdue, largely because the regulations were too specific - with the result that the detailed technical requirements were out of date. Another cause for concern was that the expertise and resources available to individual licensing authorities varied enormously, resulting in inconsistencies between them and varying standards of enforcement.

The new publication incorporates a number of features specifically intended to address these problems. It provides f

In an agreement signed in Shen Zhen, China, last week, ADSworldwide will have access to the largest domestic loudspeaker market in the world. David Hopkins OBE, chairman and managing director of holding company Audio Design Services Ltd, has been working on this project for a number of years, being a frequent visitor to the Far East. The company has appointed 40 Chinese distributors throughout China and plans for that figure to be 400 within the next four years.

The joint venture sees the creation of Adsworldwide China, an occasion enhanced by the official opening of the company’s new building in Shen Zhen. Amongst the 70 people present there was a large cross-section of representatives from Chinese television and press, as well as the newly selected distributors. After the official signing ceremony, a celebration cocktail party and dinner was held at a nearby hotel in Shen Zhen.

Barco has announced a number of important appointments and investments to accelerate its growth in a number of target niche market areas. The appointments are aligned behind the five strategic Barco Projection Systems business units - Projection Products, Digital Cinema, Daylight Displays, Control Room Displays and Simulation.

Simon Turtle, an experienced Barco sales manager, has been promoted to business development manager of Barco Projection Products. He is joined by Colin Dunne as customer services manager. Dunne, formerly with Christie UK and Dynamic Logic has more than 25 years' experience in engineering and customer service. Mark Anderson has been appointed to the newly created position of market development manager for Barco's rapidly-expanding Home Theatre product group. Previously with Pioneer and Sony, he brings nearly 20 years of sales expertise to develop the dealer networ

The United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) has announced that the deadline for submissions to its 2002 Architecture Awards Program will be 2 October 2001. Nominations will be accepted for projects located anywhere in the world, and new construction, renovations, retrofitting or reuse of structures will be considered. Now in its ninth year, the Architecture Awards program was established by the group’s Architecture Commission to bring public and professional recognition to architectural projects chosen for their design excellence and ability to resolve the challenges associated with performance spaces. To be eligible for consideration, project construction must have been completed after January 1st 1992. Among last year’s Award winners were the Severance Hall in Cleveland, Ohio; Theater and Congress Hall in Weimar, Germany; The Lowry Centre in Salford, UK; the

The Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union (BECTU) has defeated the UK Government at the European Court of Justice over the UK’s implementation of the Working Time Directive. The UK’s Working Time Regulations 1998, which implements the Directive, entitles workers to a minimum of 20 days paid leave each year. But employees are not entitled to the leave until they have completed a qualifying period of 13 continuous weeks with the same employer. This means that many freelance and contract workers who work for less than 13 weeks have been denied a right to take paid leave.

BECTU launched a legal challenge to the UK legislation and on 26 June 2001 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) accepted the opinion of the Advocate General of the ECJ, which stated that national governments may not exclude groups of workers from the rights that the directive gives them.

Showlight 2001 shall never be forgot - Tony Gottelier walks us through the highlights.

After having spent the weekend in Helensborough with friends, and undertaking several outdoor excursions immersed in Scottish mist, as opposed to Scotch mist which is something else entirely (and of which more later), it was quite a shock to wake up to unexpected and blazing heat for the first day of Showlight 2001. However, this weather was certainly appropriate as, in a very literal sense, the sun seemingly bathed this fourth quadrennial colloquium on entertainment lighting, in a golden glow throughout.

Huge credit has to go to the committee for the success that Showlight was once again. Some of the members of this panel will be mentioned in this article, some will not, if only because their roles were more behind the scenes, as it were, but all deserve fulsome praise for their contribution to a

PLASA held its most successful AGM to date on Thursday 14 June in the stunning setting of Coombe Abbey, near Coventry. Just under 70 Members attended, including for the first time, a number of Associate Members. One Member even made the trip from Europe.

During the AGM, both PLASA Chairman Mick Hannaford and Treasurer Sammy de Havilland reported a successful year for the Association, covering the wide range of initiatives that had been introduced in the past 12 months.

In his keynote speech, Chairman Mick Hannaford reflected on the changes taking place within the industry and the need for companies to equip themselves to cope with a rapidly changing world. He emphasized the role that PLASA had to play in this, and also stressed the need for more training, an ambition that the Association has given a further boost to with the recent establishment of its training and education steering

The opening of Bounce at the Roundhouse Theatre, by Nick Grace Management, brings a major international production of a highly-rated dance company’s work to London.

Lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe first visited the BouncE Streetdance Company in Sweden in 2000, with the troupe’s management and producers, to guage the potential for a major international production of the highly-rated company’s work. Woodroffe recalls: "We saw that we could translate what they were doing into something even more exciting. Les Brotherston became involved as designer and came up with this wonderful set design for the Roundhouse, on the understanding that Bounce would first do production rehearsals in Ealing, then a six-week run of the show in Sweden before moving to London."

Brotherston’s set has a wide central stage and two raised ‘satellite’ side stages

For the first time, a comprehensive study of the effects of theatrical smoke has set absolute limits on the amount of smoke that can be used safely on stages.

The report, jointly commissioned by Actors’ Equity Association and the League of American Theatres and Producers, concluded that Actors are at risk when exposed to "elevated or peak levels of glycol smoke and mineral oil." However, it also noted that if exposure levels are kept below the limits established in the study, actors should "not suffer adverse impacts to their health or their vocal abilities."

Further details of the report will appear in the July issue of Lighting&Sound International, being mailed on July 15. If you would like to receive a copy of the magazine, e-mail news@plasa.org

Further information on the study can be found at

Manchester’s most comprehensive cultural festival, Keyfest, is being held this summer. Keyfest offers 103 hours of varied events in a range of Manchester venues spanning 17 days. Event Associates created the programme and co-ordinated the production of the whole festival for radio station Key 103.

The co-ordination of the artists, venues and production of Keyfest was managed by the Event Associates team, with director Colin Sinclair overseeing the project. Manchester’s ‘street cred’ as one of the UK’s main cultural cities was once again underlined with the launch of Keyfest on Thursday 21st June at Loaf. Tom Hunter, managing director of Manchester’s radio station Key 103 welcomed a gathering of media and celebrities to the opening party. The festival programme includes a celebrity fashion show, performances from Ocean Colour Scene, Paul Weller and Da

A panel of crowd safety experts, appointed on March 11 2001 by the ILMC (The International Live Music Conference), has now agreed its agenda. The panel (CSP) has been created in order to increase the focus on health and safety in connection with music festivals and similar larger outdoor concerts. Its main purpose is to assist the government, licensing authorities and legislators with ensuring crowd safety at ongoing or future events.

The panel’s work is highly topical through recent developments in the music and festival culture, and its creation was spurred by a number of accidents and deaths at high profile events including Roskilde Festival 2000 in Denmark and other recent crowd tragedies in Australia and South America. An awareness campaign aimed at educating festival audiences across Europe about the seemingly innocent (but proven dangerous) practice of ‘crowd surfing

The MTFX Party Cannon is a single-shot cannon which fires both confetti and streamers in to the air together using a built-in compressed air cylinder. Each cannon is pre-loaded with a mixture of both tissue confetti and metallic streamers in a wide variety of colours. The confetti shapes include stars, circles, bubbles and flowers as well as regular Flying Fetti!

The Party Cannon is available in four sizes to suit all venues and operators: the 200mm cannons are particularly suitable for smaller indoor venues as they fire the confetti and streamers to a distance of up to 4 metres. The 300mm cannons are ideal for larger parties and venues as they will fire the contents up to a distance of l0 metres. The 500mm cannons are aimed at very large venues and outdoor parties as they can shoot confetti and streamers to a distance of up to 20 metres. The 800mm cannons need to be reserved for footb

TeleStage Associates held an official opening of their new office and workshops in Bury St Edmunds on the 13 June. The new premises comprise 350sq.m of office space and 520sq.m of fabrication and warehousing space.

The expansion allows for future growth and provides room for the development of a fully-equipped electrical and electronic workshop which will facilitate the wiring of equipment racks for MCC’s audio-visual equipment racks and custom panels. The workshop will be used for the prototyping and testing of control systems used in stage rigging, AV and show control. A dedicated QA area will ensure that equipment meets all necessary standards before dispatch.

To mark the opening, the company demonstrated a number of items of stage equipment, including two scissor lifts (one using Serapid link chains and the other a single spiral drive from GALA), two of the new super-silent

Latest Issue. . .