Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
Doughty - Banner - from 15 May 2025

Rigging / Staging

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UK - Retford based Rope Assemblies has been praised for its professionalism and expertise by ScottWhitbystudio for its role in helping create The St Paul's Gateway as part of the London Festival of Architecture.
The contemporary gateway structure creates over 400 mirrored images of St Paul's Cathedral as pedestrians arrive out of St Paul's Underground Station. The design features hundreds of highly reflective anodised aluminium poles suspended vertically from a simple lightweight structural canopy. In the middle of the structure, users will find a reflective oculus and dome of poles which have been derived using the same mathematical geometry Christopher Wren used when designing the dome of St Paul's Cathedral.
Osman Marfo-Gyasi, studio project leader at ScottWhitbystudio comments: "We were initially approached by the Cheapside Bid Alliance alongside the London

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USA - Trussing and staging equipment specialist Prolyte Group has opened North American headquarters in Pearland, Texas.
The company is well established across Europe and Asia and its expansion to the USA follows five years of successful operations in Canada.
Ralph Stockley, Prolyte’s chief commercial officer, comments: “Texas was an attractive selection for Prolyte’s North American headquarters. We already had an existing partnership with a company in Pearland. Other factors, such as tax benefits, the strength of the Texas economy and the proximity to the Port of Houston finalised our decision.”
Prolyte is also planning to introduce its Prolyte Campus initiative in North America, through which the company has been offering hands-on training events across the globe.
Lambert Bouwmeester, Prolyte’s chief executive officer, adds: “The opening of o
Renkus-Heinz - Banner - May 2025

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USA - ESTA has posted three documents for public review on its website. Two of the documents are reaffirmations of existing standards and one is a proposed new standard. The reviews run through 24 September.
The documents are:
ANSI E1.5, Theatrical Fog Made with Aqueous Solutions of Di- and Trihydric Alcohols
ANSI E1.5 - 2009, last reaffirmed in 2014, is being considered for reaffirmation. This standard describes the composition of theatrical fogs or artificial mists that are not likely to be harmful to healthy performers, technicians, or audience members of normal working age. It is limited to those fogs and mists made from a solution of water and one or more dihydric or trihydric alcohols, and is intended to be applied in theatres, arenas, an

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UK - Nominations for PLASA’s Gottelier Award are now open.
The award, named after late lighting designer and industry commentator Tony Gottelier, launched in 2007 to recognise product developers who have made significant and sustained contributions to the advancement of entertainment, presentation or installation technology. Previous recipients include Wayne Howell (Artistic Licence), Anne Valentino (ETC), David Cunningham (Entertec), Pasquale Quadri (Claypaky), Jim Bornhorst (Vari-Lite), John Meyer (Meyer Sound), Terry Clarke (Klark Teknik, MC2 Audio), Fred Foster (ETC), Alex Cooper (Midas & Klark Teknik), John Stadius (DiGiCo / Soundtracs) and Tony Andrews (Funktion-One).
Anyone in the industry can nominate individuals as well as development teams by emailing

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Canada - Solotech has announced David Brazeau’s appointment as director, research and development (R&D).
In this role, Brazeau will lead a team of audio, lighting and video technology solution consultants and specialists. This team will support other Solotech professionals, contribute to the delivery of various complex projects and help select equipment from suppliers, in keeping with the company’s overall technology strategy.
During more than 21 years as a Solotech employee, David has developed a diversified expertise, first, as a shop technician, then as a production technician on international stages while touring with André Rieu and Céline Dion. He went on to make a name for himself as an audio project manager for various Solotech clients, including Britney Spears and Michael Bublé. Until recently, he was a technical advisor in the audio department.

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UK - Foo Fighters shook the 80,000-capacity London Stadium to its core on two consecutive nights, as they performed on a Stageco stage on their latest tour, Concrete & Gold.
Essentially treated as a one-off for Stageco, the band played under a regular Super Roof, the company’s second largest after its voluminous XXL model, which was constructed within three days by a team headed by David Van Assche, who held the same position last summer on tours by Jeff Lynne’s ELO and Guns N’Roses. “This roof came from another one-off in Hamburg,” says Van Assche. “On a tour, we could take half a day off of the build time, but one-off shows like this don’t carry the same momentum.”
The equipment arrived at the former London Olympics venue in Stratford in 17 trucks. 12 Stageco crew set to work on the build with assistance from 15 local crew climbers and 15 h

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UK - Since its inception in 2015, Depot has become a leading alternative events space in Cardiff, originating highly successful experiences and events that have frequently been replicated across the UK.
For the last two years, Depot’s creative team has staged its own music and street food festival - in 2017, at the SWALEC cricket stadium, and at Cardiff Castle in 2018. Cardiff-based events services supplier 11th Hour played a prominent role in this year’s renewal having been invited by Depot to supply a number of key services.
Depot In The Castle featured an extravaganza of music and family entertainment, complemented by several artisan food outlets, that was in stark contrast to many of the summer’s more directly commercial festivals. Stiltwalkers and jugglers set the tone, in a relaxed, family-focused environment where an inspired music line-up, including afte

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France - In its third successful year in France, the Download festival served as solid evidence that rock’n’roll is as alive and relevant as it was in 1980, when its direct predecessor – Monsters Of Rock – forced itself on the unsuspecting English market town of Castle Donington.
Launched in 2003 to showcase the best in rock, metal and hardcore, Download expanded in 2016 with Live Nation’s introduction of Download Paris, and Stageco France – as the provider of all five stages – has played a major role in the festival’s production since it began.
In fact, as long as Igor Dawidowicz steers the ship as production manager, Stageco appears to have a job for life. He comments: “Involving Stageco was a very easy decision. Who else could do it? We know a lot of staging companies, but I can’t imagine giving this responsibility to anyone but Stageco – they

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Italy - Concerts by Italian megastar Vasco Rossi are usually an emotional experience, but the artist’s recent Non Stop Live summer stadium tour was ‘moving’ for a different reason - a large Kinesys automation system was used to dramatically change the architecture and shape of the stage through the show.
Lighting designer Giovanni Pinna, set designer Claudio Santucci of Gioforma, d3 operator Marco Piva and other key members of Vasco’s creative team including live camera director Peppe Romano were instrumental in the implementation of the Kinesys system to maximise the dynamic movement they wanted as part of the show aesthetic.
The hardware and control was supplied by PRG Belgium and operated on the road by Jimmy Johnson a UK based rigger / automation specialist.
The system comprised 16 x half tonne Kinesys ApexHOISTS complete with ApexDRIVES which

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UK - A group of industry representatives will cycle from Chippenham to London Olympia on Saturday 15 September to increase awareness of mental health within the entertainment and events industries. All donations will go to Backup, the technical entertainment charity which helps industry members and their families get back on their feet during times of hardship.
Starting at 7am, the cyclists will traverse 100 miles across the North Wessex Downs towards London in time for the PLASA Show. So far, eight cyclists have signed up to the challenge, including Peter Heath and Shane McGreevy of PLASA, John McEvoy and Bryan Raven of Whitelight, and Ben Tredwell of Autograph. 
This bike ride is part on an on-going collaboration between PLASA and PSA to support the mental health of all those working within lighting, AV, live sound, rigging and staging. This collaboration continues

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Malta - Luxury cruise line Seabourn introduced its newest vessel, the Seabourn Ovation, with a naming ceremony in the harbour of Valletta in Malta in May. The ship is the fifth ultra-luxury vessel to join the Seabourn fleet over the past decade and the second of two ships designed by Adam D. Tihany.
The event was managed by Belinda King Creative Productions and saw the ship's Godmother, Elaine Paige perform to an exclusive audience on the cruise ship’s pool deck and a debut of the Seabourn anthem entitled We Sail to See the Lives of Others by Tim Rice was performed. The evening was capped with a fireworks’ display that lit up Valletta Harbour.
Belinda King Creative Productions brought Push the Button on board to handle the technical aspects of the project and they, in turn, asked Unusual to deal with the rigging elements.
Jim Dugan, production manager

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USA - The ANSI Board of Standards Review has approved a revised version of ANSI E1.46, Standard for the Prevention of Falls from Theatrical Stages and Raised Performance Platforms. The standard has been revised to address changes to the OSHA regulations for fall protection, while keeping the document's useful guidance for preventing falls from stages into the orchestra pit or the house.
ANSi E1.46 – 2018 can be downloaded at no cost from the ESTA TSP website at tsp.esta.org/freestandards. The no-cost download is made possible by the sponsorship of ProSight Specialty Insurance. Alternatively, the standard may be purchased for $40 from ANSI and IHS at webstore.ansi.org/ and global.ihs.com/ respectively.
(Jim Evans)

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Portugal - Airstar, the French lighting balloon technology specialist, delivered a remarkable performance for the opening ceremony of the Eurovision Song Contest at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) of Lisbon, on the banks of the Tagus.
Before battling it out in Lisbon’s Altice Arena, one of the country’s largest concert halls, delegations from 43 countries gathered at the MAAT to walk on the ESC’s ‘Blue Carpet’, under the light of Airstar’s lighting balloons.
Airstar specified and installed 30 Crystal and Solarc lighting balloons.
Raphael Vaz, head of Airstar’s Portuguese subsidiary, explains: "We had lengthy discussions with the client, and we were able to come back with a solution that was a perfect fit for such a high-profile event, but also perfectly adapted to the constraints of the venue. We wanted to bring out the magni

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UK - Star Events redesigned the entire Great Oak Stage sub-structure and super-structure to accommodate Roger Waters’ Us + Them production, which opened the BST Hyde Park series last Friday.
With gags including smoking Battersea Power Station chimneys rising above the stage, graffiti strewn flying pigs and the surround sound effects synonymous with Roger Waters, Us + Them managed to set a new precedent, even for a Hyde Park performance.
The Pink Floyd-heavy two-and-a-half-hour show contemporised the politics from the band’s mid-70s/early-80s canon through a series of stunning visual sequences fitted to the songs.
The back of the traditional performance box was pushed up and film, cartoons and stills on the resulting 1,100sq m video wall focused on state-sponsored torture, refugees, human rights, Donald Trump and the singer’s support for Pale

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UK - Unusual was the technical production company of choice for Artichoke when it staged the Processions march in London last month. The mass artwork took place on 10 June in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London and saw thousands of women and girls come together and march, wearing either green white or violet – the colours of the suffragette movement - creating the appearance of a flowing river of colour through the city streets.
Jim Dugan, production manager at Unusual explained: “We’ve been working with Artichoke on its major events and art installations for some years now – Lumiere London and Durham, the Sultan’s Elephant, Great Fire 350 etc, so we were excited to get involved with an event that celebrated something so fundamentally important in our country’s history.
“Our role on this project was to facilitate all the technical elements – from th

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Germany - Penn Elcom GmbH in Germany has moved to a new 8,000sq.m premises in Elten, north Westfalen just 10 kilometres from the previous warehouse – and over double the size.
From this hub, the company distributes over 1,700 product lines and hardware including 19-inch racking, flightcase components and loudspeaker elements directly to B2B and B2C customers all over Europe.
The new facility will assist the busy operation in continuing – and streamlining - the efficient and fast delivery of products worldwide which are manufactured by Penn in the UK.
It was imperative to stay in the same regional location explains Dennis Marco Meertens, co-MD of Penn Elcom GmbH with Thomas Mostar. “Elten is perfectly positioned for expedient onward transportation and delivery to our local and regional sales teams – a very successful model devised to best understand speci

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Europe - The PLASA Awards for Innovation are now open for entries. Product manufacturers and developers are invited to enter the annual awards by 17 August (Friday). Successfully nominated products will feature on the Innovation Gallery throughout the PLASA Show (16-18 September, London Olympia), with winners announced at a special ceremony on 17 September (Monday).
Entries will be judged by an independent panel of industry experts, with up to eight awards, including the possibility of Gold Award, set to be given to products and solutions that demonstrate a new style of thinking, improve technical practice and safety, introduce new technology, materials or techniques, or offer new commercial advantages. The PLASA Award for Sustainability may be presented to a solution that achieves significant power reduction, has a positive impact on the environment or makes an effective us

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UK - Christie Lites UK has made a major investment in Kinesys automation equipment. The stage lighting company’s British operation has purchased 24 half-tonne Liftket motors with Kinesys Elevation 1+ vari-speed controllers, complete with LibraCELL load monitoring shackle pins and the brand’s powerful and flexible Vector control software package.
Christie Lites UK account handler Andy Strachan comments: “Kinesys is constantly appearing on riders and technical specifications - a strong sign of their success and that is across all sectors of our work - corporate and industrial, concert touring, television and theatre”.
Christie Lites CEO and founder Huntly Christie made the decision to go with Kinesys, together with Andy Strachan, Roy Hunt and Mathew Ilott who are all part of the Christie Lites UK’s account management team.
The Kinesys investment is an in

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UK - Folkstone’s Magistrates Court sentenced Maidstone Studios Limited to pay a £30,000 fine and £6,487.76 worth of damages after a worker fell to his death.
Justin Newitt fell five metres through an opening on the roof at the TV studio on 23 September 2015 after using an unsafe mobile access tower to climb to the roof.
The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) identified a lack of planning with regards to the condition the tower, which had ladder sections the wrong way round, damaged bracing and inadequate guardrails. No formal planning had been recorded and there had been no supervision on how the work was being carried out.
HSE also highlighted that Mr Newitt had not been trained to erect the tower safely.
HSE inspecto

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USA - Celebrating its third year of exhibiting at InfoComm, Current RMS demonstrated its rental management software to all that came by stand C1510 over the three days.
Since last year’s show, Current RMS has released a number of new features, showing that it’s expanding as per the changing needs of the industry the cloud-based software was built for.
Do a Deal, the most recent feature update, was well received by booth visitors, providing users with the ability to set a round figure on quotes and orders they create for their clients. For example, if a job comes out at £6,453, it can be rounded up or down to create a neater price and much friendlier quotations. Deal prices are flexible, and can be set on product groups, or the entire job, distributing the change in revenue accordingly and allowing users to keep track of the profitability for each job.
A

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Europe/Asia - Milos held its annual product academies at its bases in Roudnice nad Labem, the Czech Republic (13-14 April), and in Guangzhou, China (10-11 May).
The two-day product academy has been designed to provide attendees with the knowledge and skills for working safer while carrying out rigging duties and constructing support structures.
The Czech Republic event brought together local attendees, but also visitors from Slovakia, Germany, England, Scotland and Australia. The product academy in China drew attendees from China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, as well as from Australia, New Zealand and Kenya.
Eric Porter, certified rigging consultant and internationally renowned rigging professional, gave rigging presentations and provided rigging consultations. Norbert Tripp, Area Four Industries technical director and structural engineer, held presenta

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Poland - Protec European Events partnered with their client Xerox once again to deliver the audio, lighting, video and rigging at the Xerox Forum 2018 held in Warsaw.
This event, held in the Doubletree Hilton from 22-24 May, included three days of presentations and 23 seminar sessions with the highlight being the Xerox International Operations Premiere of the new Xerox IridesseTM Production Press.
Xerox hosted 400 of their top graphic communications customers, resellers and business partners from around the world.
The project ran in a few separate spaces or scenes – a daytime conference, a pre-reveal with Kabuki curtain, the reveal element and finally, the conference and demonstrations on the new machine.
Sean Godefroy, HOD Protec video, chose three Barco 20k projectors, one for each side screen and one for a kabuki drop drape projection. He chose the Ch

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Switzerland - Verity Studios AG, an indoor drone technology specialist, has announced that it has raised $18m in a Series A funding round. Fontinalis Partners, a venture capital firm focused on next-generation mobility technologies, led the round. Other investors include Airbus Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, and Kitty Hawk. Verity plans to use this funding to expand its live events business, with a heavy focus on US growth, as well as to expand into other commercial verticals.
“Verity has assembled an exceptional team, with credibility, valuable IP, and extensive technical know-how, all while building a fast-growing business in the live events market,” says Chris Cheever, co-founder and partner at Fontinalis. “Our firm was founded to invest in and help scale the world’s best mobility technologies, and what Verity has developed has broad applicability beyond entertai

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UK - The winners of the Association of British Theatre Technicians (ABTT) Theatre Awards 2018 have been announced.
The awards ceremony took place on 6 June (Wednesday) at Alexandra Palace, London.
The five awards for sound, lighting, engineering, widget and stand were complemented by a special award to mark the retirement of Roger Fox, the theatre show's director, acknowledging his 40 years work on building and developing the event since 1978.

The winners, who were picked by an experienced jury of working practitioners and industry peers, are listed below, along with the jury's comments:

ABTT Sound Product of the Year
EM Acoustics for EMS-41
"This speaker features a compact design with a 4” driver and coaxial compression driver, producing similar output to the larger EMS-51, but at half the size,
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GLP - MPU - Feb, Apr 2025

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