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UK - The PSA Welfare & Benevolent Fund accepted a donation of £500 from Clay Paky's Knights of Illumination Awards at this year's PLASA Show. A cheque was handed over by Clay Paky president and managing director Pasquale Quadri and marketing manager Enrico Caironi to Britannia Row Productions' Mike Lowe, one of the Fund's Trustees.

The only awards exclusively dedicated to lighting designers, the Knight of Illumination Awards are the result of an idea launched by Clay Paky and organised by the Italian firm in collaboration with STLD and ALD. The four awards categories are for Theatre, TV, Rock and a Lifetime Recognition award.

Enrico Caironi said: "We are delighted to offer our support to this established industry charity that helps Production Services Association members and their families at times of crisis."

PSA Welfare & Benevolent Fund Chairman Mike Lowe

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The Netherlands - A selected group of rigging experts, manufacturers and consultants attended the Rigging Day in Utrecht organised by the VPT (Dutch organisation for Stage Technology) earlier this month.

During the programme, the CWA 25 regulation was presented by one of the workgroup members, Gert Jan Brouwer of Frontline Rigging. For more than two years, an international group of entertainment industry experts have worked on the European code of practice for stage machinery and load bearing structures, which is officially titled Lifting and load-bearing equipment for stages and other production areas within the entertainment industry.

The CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) will be the first stage in the process to build a Europe-wide consensus community. The initial objective of the workshop will be to make an inventory of standards and standard-like documents, as well as l

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UK White Light has continued its long-established collaboration with the Motley Design Course, once again supplying lighting equipment to the Course's annual exhibition of this year's students' work.

Founded in 1966 by Stephen Arlen, then managing director of Sadler's Wells Opera, and Margaret 'Percy' Harris, then the company's resident designer, the course was first known as the Sadler's Well Design Course. The course subsequently became the Theatre Design Course of the English National Opera until 1981, and after some time at the Riverside Studios, the Almeida Theatre and the Royal National Theatre Studio, the course acquired the name Motley and took up residence at its present home, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

Every year the course selects up to 12 postgraduate-level students who wish to specialise in theatre design. The one-year course is project based, featuring five or

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No Laughing matter - Clowns appearing at a circus in Birmingham were silenced by licensing regulators who banned them from playing their trumpets. Zippo's Circus said Birmingham City Council officials told them the show could not go on unless the clowns dropped the musical part of their act.

The circus, performing in Calthorpe Park, Edgbaston, fell foul of the Licensing Act 2003. The act forbids the playing of live music without a licence. Circus owner Martin Burton said that applying for a licence was time-consuming and expensive and called for circuses to be exempt from the legislation. He said: "I'm a big fan of silent comedy, but this is nonsense."

Old Rocker News (1) - Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant has scotched rumours that he is to tour with the band, describing speculation as "frustrating and ridiculous". Last week, The Sun newspaper reported th

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UK - Hire Association Europe (HAE) will launch its new trade association for the event hire sector at the Showman's Show this month. Event Hire Association (EHA) will cater especially for companies in the event hire industry, and will run alongside HAE.

Working specifically for the event hire sector, the board of the new association will provide help and support for event hire companies across the UK and Ireland.

Graham Arundell, managing director of HAE and board member of EHA, said, "The new association has been created to better support those companies in the event hire market. Although we offer a range of benefits as part of HAE's membership, we decided that we could offer a much more tailored service to event hire companies if they had a dedicated association of their own."

(Jim Evans)

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Europe - Queen, fronted by Paul Rodgers, have called on Power Logistics to ensure the electrical supply on their current world tour is entirely reliable and smoothly delivered. The tour opened recently at a large charity concert in Kharkov, Ukraine and will have passed through Riga, Berlin, Antwerp, Paris, Rome and Zurich before arriving in the UK on 10 October.

Power Logistics' managing director Pete Wills remains with the band as tour electrician for the duration of the 2008 tour.

"We are delighted to be able to help Queen on their current European Tour," says Wills. "We have a long standing relationship with Queen's production team built on our reputation for making doubly certain the show must go on."

(Jim Evans)

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Festival News - Half the tickets for 2009's Glastonbury festival have been sold already, eight months before the Somerset festival is due to take place. Tickets went on sale on Sunday morning and by early evening more than half the 137,500 places were snapped up. Spokesman John Shearlaw said he was "chuffed" so many tickets had gone for the event at Worthy Farm, Pilton. The early ticket sale comes after last year's event failed to sell out on the first day. Despite that, Shearlaw said he had not expected the tickets to sell out so far in advance. "That would have been extraordinary, without a line-up and eight months before the event," he said. "You can look at it from both sides because if they had all sold out, there would have been eight months of turning people away.

Church News - Guitarist Carlos Santana has said he wants to become a church minister when h

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UK - Sustainable events came a step closer to reality with the announcement of the UK's single largest self-funded programme on implementing the new British Standard, BS 8901 Sustainable Event Management.

The programme, which commenced earlier this year, involves every part of the industry sector, from event clients to organisers, and venues to suppliers and features large corporate companies through to small and medium-sized enterprises.

This programme is managed by the Sustainable Events Group (SEG) and is due to run through until the planned review of the new standard early in 2009. Experiences from the programme will feed directly into the BS 8901 revision process undertaken by the British Standards Institution.

"The programme gives the UK event industry a real chance to lead the world in the application of sustainability principles to their activities and events,&q

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UK - PLASA has launched a major new initiative on behalf of companies who work in, or supply to, the production and events sectors. In partnership with the Sustainable Events Group, PLASA has put together a programme of workshops designed to take companies through the development and implementation of BS 8901 - the major new event management standard that will influence how all events are delivered in the future.

Attaining compliance with BS 8901 will give businesses a significant market advantage as the new standard is already being specified by major organisations such as London2012 and is a core commitment of the recently-issued DCMS Sustainable Development Action Plan.

The programme, which is open to both members and non-members, is based on a series of five one-day workshops held at 4-5 week intervals, and has been specifically designed to provide a low-cost route to achi

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UK - At the 2008 PLASA Show, the White Light family welcomed two new members - truss manufacturer Tomcat, and JB Lighting, manufacturer of LED moving lights.

For Tomcat, White Light will be the exclusive UK distributor for the Tomcat One range of truss products. The One range includes both ladder, rectangular box, triangular and stacking truss designs with either 48mm or 50mm diameter tubes.

JB Lighting is an innovative new manufacturer of LED and more traditional automated lighting fixtures, including the VaryLED A7 Zoom adjustable-beam moving LED washlight. The fixture won a Silver PLASA Award for Innovation this year.

The VaryLED A7 will be available from mid-November, with it and the rest of the JB Lighting range available in the UK exclusively from White Light.

(Jim Evans)

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Canada - CAST Software has introduced its joint innovators for BlackBox, which made its world debut at PLASA08 in London.

CAST's BlackBox is built with special hardware and proprietary software to be an integrated, bi-directional high speed communication solution which enables all control devices connected to it to send or receive instructions from each other. Live, realtime input is received in all forms by the BlackBox which acts as the brains - running on an ultra high-speed hybrid version of WYSIWYG.

CAST is working with key industry leaders - each a respected innovator in its own field -- to ensure BlackBox meets its technical objectives. In exchange, each will get a 12-month exclusive leadtime to enhance their own products to capitalize on the power and speed of BlackBox. Representatives of these companies were on hand during PLASA for the Beta launch phase to announce t

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Competition News - The ESTA Foundation has announced the Behind the Scenes 2008 raffle prizes for LDI. The lucky winner of the Grand Prize will receive a $10,000 gift certificate with a premier travel agent that can be used to travel anywhere in the world. Second Prize is a $2,500 Amazon Gift Card and Third Prize is a $1,000 Amazon Gift Card.

"Often our industry is creating "a vacation look" for everyone else, so we are very excited to offer this great opportunity to get away on your own vacation," said Rick Rudolph, chair of the Behind the Scenes committee.

Tickets are $25 each or 5 for $100 and will be available throughout the LDI show at the Behind the Scenes booth #2810. A maximum of 2000 tickets will be available. Tickets will also be available at the ESTA Annual Dinner on Thursday evening and the Rose Brand party on Friday evening. LDI 2008 takes place from

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USA - City Theatrical has been granted US Patent number 7,432,803 for its wireless technology. City Theatrical's wireless DMX is similar in concept to a home or business WiFi system, but uses a much more robust and powerful radio transport method to ensure reliability of mission critical systems, says the company.

CTI's patent covers the transmission of DMX, RDM, and ACN via the means of FHSS (frequency hopping spread spectrum) radios as well as DHSS (direct sequence spread spectrum) radios, in the 2.4 GHz range. Also covered are the bi-directional broadcast of data, and the concept of a remote monitor for RDM and ACN.

City Theatrical's president, Gary Fails commented: "This patent is the result of over seven years of product development effort by Larry Dunn and Paul Kleissler, beginning when they were both independent engineers consulting with CTI, and leading to them jo

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USA - Founded last year by producer Hank Neuberger, Springboard Productions was enlisted by promoters C3 Presents and Giant Pictures as supervising producer at this year's Austin City Limits Festival.

"Festivals like this differ vastly compared to working with a single band or in theatre assignments," Neuberger says. "First of all, you're doing at least five bands at each stage per day with almost no sound checks, and you can consider yourself lucky if you get a complete line check. On top of all this you're subject to the whims of the great outdoors and whatever weather comes your way, you're not always able to work in the most ideal of locations, and there are a lot of inputs. It's perfectly common to deal with 50 at a time from a single stage."

Working with headlining acts the Foo Fighters, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Beck, Manu Chao, John Fogerty, D

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Eurovision News - Andrew Lloyd Webber is to help pick the UK's next Eurovision entry, in an overhaul of the BBC's selection show. Lord Lloyd Webber will compose the UK's entry and embark on a search for the singer or group to perform the song. Graham Norton will host BBC TV show Your Country Needs You to find new talent for the 2009 contest, after a string of poor results for the UK. Lord Lloyd Webber said: "In my life I have never shied away from the impossible and this looks like the biggest mission impossible of all time. But with the might of the BBC and the British public behind me who knows what will happen?"

Opera News - "Not so long ago, making a fanfare about big frocks and fancy sets in opera was the preserve of that crowd-pleasing impresario Raymond Gubbay," wrote Emma Pomfret in The Times. "Heaven forbid that you uttered the words &quo

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UK - Pod Bluman, formerly head of the Music Division at PSL Events, has left the London-based event services company to set up on his own.

Under Bluman's stewardship, PSL has provided projection and screens to Global Gathering, Creamfields and The Big Chill festivals, to Razorlight, Faithless, Portishead and the Pet Shop Boys, to the BAFTA Awards and to the World Music Awards.

(Jim Evans)

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USA - D-Tools reports that Visimation Inc., a Seattle-based professional services company, has joined the D-Tools Certified Partner Programme. Visimation provides custom Visio shape development and integration with Microsoft Office applications Word, Excel, and SharePoint. The company is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. In addition to custom services, Visimation's online store www.ShapeSource.com offers thousands of pre-made Visio shapes including network equipment and symbols for security and safety planning.

"We are very pleased to offer our customers the ability to become more productive with Visio through the customisation that Visimation can provide for special shapes, reports, and more," said Adam Stone, president and founder of D-Tools. "When our customers need something special related to Visio, Visimation is the go-to company that can deliver it."

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Awards News - Bandit Lites was named as 'Lighting Company of the Year' at the 2008 Parnelli Awards Ceremony. The annual awards event took place at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino on 24 October in conjunction with LDI. Rock & Roll legend, Alice Cooper hosted the event. Bandit president, Pete Heffernan, vice-presidents Richard Willis and Mike Golden and San Francisco general manager, Dizzy Gosnell were among Bandit employees to attend the awards ceremony and accepted the award on Bandit's behalf.

Comeback News - Led Zeppelin are planning to tour and record but without frontman Robert Plant. Bassist John Paul Jones told BBC Radio Devon that a new singer was being sought after Plant ruled himself out. The last time the band performed together was at the O2 arena in London in December 2007. Speculation has since been rife that the surviving members of the band, with Jason Bonham, son of

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UK - PRG has announced that it has strengthened its specialist brand strategy in the UK by acquiring Essential Lighting Group from the Staging Connections Group.

PRG CEO Jere Harris said: "We are very excited about the acquisition of Essential Lighting which underscores our commitment to a specialist brand strategy in the UK. The EL business has been driven by an engaged and committed leadership team that will strengthen the management of our UK businesses"

Essential's managing director, Martin Locket commented: "We are looking forward to becoming a member of PRG's group of companies. The resources available to us from a global organisation will help us provide a wider range of products and services within our offer to our customers."

Essential Lighting will be keeping their name, logo and identity, continuing as an independent brand, focussed on the mark

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USA - NSCA members who have shown exceptional achievements can share their expertise with peers and customers through NSCA's Excellence in Business Awards. The awards will be presented at the 2009 NSCA Business and Leadership Conference, sponsored by InfoComm International, 26-28 February in Phoenix, AZ.

Systems integrators are encouraged to nominate themselves or their industry peers who have demonstrated outstanding success in the past year in various categories.

Submissions are due 31 December 2008. The NSCA Business and Leadership Conference Committee will announce the winners on 15 January 2009.

"Creativity, vision, flexibility, economic security - these are key to the success of today's integrators," said Chuck Wilson, NSCA executive director. "NSCA is pleased to promote and recognise integrators who excel in their day-to-day activities."

Four com

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UK - UK Skills Secretary John Denham announced that small businesses will be the focus of £350 million worth of Government funds to help them train their staff. The Government's approach will be reshaped and money will be available to deliver a new package of support to help small businesses get through the tougher economic climate by building the skills and expertise of their workers.

It will deliver funding for training, with the minimum level of bureaucracy or delay. This will be for subjects such as business improvement techniques or leadership and management, which are proven to provide skills to increase the productivity of individuals and firms. John Denham said:"Small businesses are an important engine of our economy and we must make sure that we support them during tough economic times.

"We are overhauling the training system to make sure that they can

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UK - Stagecraft Ltd, the Salisbury-based lighting, sound and AV hire and sales company, went into liquidation on 17 October 2008, LSI Online has learned. Lisa Tapper, the former accounts manager of Stagecraft Ltd, reports that she and other key staff members have bought the assets of the company and are reforming as Stagecraft Technical Services Ltd as of today, 30 October 2008.

The new company directors are Lisa Tapper, Mike Naish (formerly Stagecraft Ltd production manager), Kevin Hughes (former projects manager) and Simon Sketchley, who has joined the company from AJS Theatre Lighting and Stage Supplies, where he was general manager.

Tapper reports that eight key members of staff have been retained as part of the new operation, while a further eight have lost their jobs.

Tapper was also confirmed that all forward orders on Stagecraft Ltd's books will be honoured by the ne

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UK - The Creative Blueprint has been launched in Northern Ireland and will ensure the long term success of the nation's creative and cultural industries. The Creative Blueprint has been informed by extensive research from employers, education providers and the industry in Northern Ireland. It gives a snapshot of where the industry is currently at and what needs to be addressed in the future to ensure workforce skills development.

Tom Bewick, chief executive of Creative & Cultural Skills said: "This action plan is employer-driven and therefore entirely employer focused. The creative and cultural industries in Northern Ireland have grown considerably, but there still isn't a clear progression route for those entering the industries and skills gaps exist within the workforce. In Northern Ireland, we are delighted to have received funding from the Department for Employment and

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Jordan - "We've just completed one the most unusual, challenging, and yet ultimately rewarding shows in the company's history," said Britannia Row Productions' Bryan Grant, speaking after a recent gala event in Petra, Jordan, that saw stars from the world of classical and popular music come together to celebrate the work of Luciano Pavarotti on the anniversary of his birthday, 12 October.

"This wasn't just an act of veneration," explained Grant, "Pavarotti touched many people in his lifetime, particularly through his work as United Nations Messenger of Peace. It's rare to see stars the calibre of Sting and Zucchero rubbing shoulders with the likes of Carreras, Domingo and Bocelli, but that was the nature of the man."

Naturally, such a potent mix of performers brings its own challenges, the services of Britannia Row being engaged to bring their own

  1. The Week in Lighting & Sound
  2. Behind the Scenes 2008 LDI Raffle winners
  3. Damon Crisp launches distribution company
  4. Rock Our World winners announced
  5. O2 and Live Nation/AMG in strategic alliance
  6. NSCA names 2008 Educator of the Year
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