On Monday 6 July the live events and creative industries came together for the #lightitred campaign, which aimed to highlight the critical stage the sector is in due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The campaign was inspired by Germany’s #NightofLight on 22 June, which saw over 9,000 buildings, monuments, structures, towers, landmarks, castles, offices,
houses and more illuminated in “emergency red” to raise awareness for the arts and creative industries.

In support of #lightitinred, Fineline Lighting Director Rob Sangwell reached out to the team behind Glastonbury Festival with an idea to light up one of the most iconic and well known structures in the world of live events: The Pyramid Stage.

With the support of the festival, along with the countless venues and businesses that took part in the campaign, the industry’s urgent message reached a wide audience and gained the attention of several high profile publications including NME magazine.

The campaign comes as the government announces a £1.57bn support package for the arts and creatives industries, which was welcomed by many but may be thinly spread across what is a large and diverse industry supporting a high number of temporary workers, small businesses and freelancers.

Andy Lenthall, GM of the Production Services Association, said: “We welcome the announcement of the support package and we are working in collaboration with the live events sector to ensure that this and other support is distributed throughout the supply chain, beyond empty venues, to the people and companies that create and enable events. #lightitinred is a prime example of how our supply chain can emerge from the background and create an impact.”

Rob Sangwell added: “A lot of people pulled together to make this happen, a massive thankyou to Michael Eavis, Emily Eavis, Haggis Mcleod, Jason Bryant,
Chris Salmon and Rob Kearle from Glastonbury Festival; Jim Creed from Powerline, who loaned us the generator; and the crew: James Harrington, Reuben Pinkney, Chris Randall and Fox Valentine.

Fineline Lighting hosted over 20 lighting designers across two days on 17-18 February for basic and advanced MagicQ training, in partnership with ChamSys.

The ChamSys team were joined for the training by Chauvet ChamSys Product Specialist Rebbecca Cadd.

The basic course covered the use of all MagicQ products including the range of PC Wings and MagicQ consoles. It taught attendees about starting new shows from scratch, layouts, patching, recording and editing cues, cue lists and chases, FX programming and pixelmapping.

The advanced course covered advanced MagicQ features including advanced patching, media server control, timecode, scheduled events, execute window and group FX.

Aziz Adilkhodjaev, International Business Development Manager at ChamSys, commented: “Massive thanks to Rob and Sevim [Sangwell, Fineline Directors] for organising this day. Everything went smoothly with all trainees being very happy with all the arrangements, training facility, lunch and hospitality of the hosts in general.

“After the success of the first training, we are looking forward to organising more training there throughout the year for lighting professionals to learn more about ChamSys products and get to know more about Fineline's operations and extensive expertise in their fields."

Rob Sangwell added: “Fineline were delighted to host these free training sessions for lighting designers. We believe it’s important to provide these courses to LDs to support their continued professional development and keep them up to date with the latest new kit and consoles.”

If you are interested in hearing about future ChamSys training sessions hosted by Fineline, email info@finelinelighting.com.

The sustainability initiative, Festival Vision:2025, has released the second edition of its flagship Show Must Go On report, revealing the latest figures, trends and practices surrounding the festival industry’s response to the climate crisis.

The full report is available as a free download here.

Five years on from the publication of the first edition, the new 126-page report gives an insight into sector sustainability, and reflects the progress made in technologies, materials and operational practices to reduce environmental impacts. Its main chapters, authored by experts in their own fields, cover governance, resources & waste, water, food, energy, and travel & transport.

Coinciding with the release of the report is the newly launched online Knowledge Hub, a significant free-to-access resource that will feature case studies, briefings and a supplier directory.

More than 100 festivals and events have made the Vision:2025 pledge and more than 60 suppliers, including Fineline Lighting, have supported the report.

Chris Johnson, chair of Powerful Thinking and Vision:2025, stated: “After a decade of the Powerful Thinking industry steering group, this is a significant step in the journey. The industry has now come together around a vision and has crowdfunded world-leading resources to inspire meaningful action. This has been a huge collaborative effort and our thanks go out to all contributors, including our three Gamechangers: Festival Republic, Continest and Nordic Wristbands, whose financial support underpinned the process.

“The report is a call to action. Whatever people and organisations have done to date, the time to act and to tackle the climate crisis is now.

“The Show Must Go On report opens with a clear note framing the climate emergency with an optimistic message – we must act now and ‘We Can Fix It’.”

Alison Tickell, CEO and founder of Julie’s Bicycle, the charity behind Powerful Thinking and Vision 2025, said: “Living within the generous boundaries of our planet’s ecosystems is now the only job in hand. As a creative and events collective, we can bring inspiration and community to this task.”

On 23-24 January Fineline Lighting hosted students from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School for a set of “Introduction to Rigging Training” courses at the company’s Clevedon warehouse.
The training is held annually for students at the school and provides a vital next step into the world of rigging and technical event production.
Rob Sangwell, Director at Fineline Lighting, commented: “It was fantastic hosting the students from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, they all worked hard and learnt a lot. It’s always great to see new generations of technical production professionals expanding their skillset.”
“All the feedback from the students about the training was positive,” added Bristol Old Vic Theatre School Tutor Frank Bradley. “They really enjoyed the sessions and felt they had learned a basic knowledge of rigging truss which would give them confidence if they needed to apply it practically in future, and provided an insight into an area of work in which some of them would like to gain more experience.”
If you are involved with a Production Arts course and would be interested in working with Fineline to provide practical training sessions for students, please get in touch.

Multi-platinum selling band Skid Row embarked on a 14 date European winter tour in 2019, and brought Lighting Designer Will Furze on board to enhance their design and programme the show lighting utilising his own GrandMA2 Light console.

“I was extremely excited to have been part of this,” he said. “Skid Row are legendary and for good reason! To be working with them is an absolute privilege especially as they take their production value very seriously, hence the decision to incorporate a choreographed light show as a core part of their performance.”

The run was across a number of European and UK venues, along with two winter festivals, throughout November and December 2019.

Will enlisted Fineline Lighting to supply the lighting floor package for the tour.

“I’m lucky to have Fineline as my local company,” he continued. “The team are absolutely fantastic and extremely helpful, often going above and beyond to help me out on various projects.

“For the Skid Row tour I was looking for a floor package that was light, compact and easy on power but would also be able to keep up with any house rig we came across. The Rogue R2X that Fineline stock fitted the bill perfectly and performed flawlessly even up against 1200w discharge fixtures – their punch vs size is incredible!

“We used 8 of the fixtures, 4 on Novopro podiums on the upstage, 2 on the riser and 2 on the downstage.

“Fineline put together a neat cable pack of dmx and powercon looms that had me all set up and ready to go in under 30 minutes with the ability to make the package work on large or small stages.”

Will will be rejoining the band in 2020 for the next part of the United World Rebellion Tour.