Open Air Business November/December 2016

EVENTS
EVENTS
regards to planning and licensing; in
fact both these things help steer us
to a more professional delivery.
How have you planned the layout
of the event?
In the past two years we have
moved from Burleigh Hill Farm to
Moggerhanger Park in Bedfordshire,
which is a prestigious country
house with a rich heritage. Its core
business is weddings, but it has
been very open to diversification
across its 33 acres of parkland,
which has meant flexibility in
accommodating our growing
festival.
The main area of the estate we
use consists of a series of walled
gardens, a repurposed Second
World War hospital unit and some
of the extensive woodland. We
currently run three stages and the
walled gardens act as arenas. The
10ft high walls not only act as a
sound barrier, but also trap the heat
of the late summer sun. The formal
shape of the walled gardens does
dictate how we use them, but with
a bit of imagination you can create
outside of the literal box.
“WE HIRE
IN A BIG
SCREEN FOR
USE ON OUR
LARGEST
STAGE; IT IS
A CLEVER
BIT OF KIT
THAT IS
ESSENTIALLY
AN LED
CURTAIN...”
How did you research and source
your marquees, stage, bars etc?
Due to the grassroots nature of
our business we have not yet hired
in marquees, although that day
is coming. Instead we borrowed
them in the early days, and now
purchase Gala Tent marquees when
funds allow. Experience with these
products has convinced us they are
well worth the investment.
What entertainment do you offer?
We mainly support unsigned, up and
coming, UK-based bands. We don’t
focus on any given genre, and our
patrons are broad minded enough to
give any band a chance.
We track down bands through
the normal sources, but also follow
up contacts gained by working
with other bands. We seek to build
relationships with the musicians we
host, and try to treat them how we
would want to be treated.
What provisions do you make for
power, lights and sound?
Given the permanence of
Moggerhanger Park, we are able to
tap into existing services on site;
our use of electricity is carefully
managed by our in-house team
who work alongside professionals
such as Audoria (a start-up business
that has emerged from Cambridge
Youth Musical Theatre) and Whitton
Electrical Services. Sound systems
and lighting are primarily provided
by Solitech based in Cambridge.
Our stages are installed by Impact
Stages from Peterborough, and are
amazing pieces of kit that can be
erected in a relatively short amount
of time and, by design, can be built
on uneven surfaces, which makes
them ideal for our purposes.
We hire in a big screen for use
on our largest stage; it is a clever
bit of kit that is essentially an LED
curtain, making the whole structure
incredibly lightweight. This is
supplied by the very attentive Music-
AV.
We have built ongoing
relationships with our providers,
and also give them the freedom
to experiment with new concepts
and ideas at the festival. Having a
rigid plan with these things is not
conducive to creativity.
How do you manage admissions
and visitor safety?
We run our own ticketing systems
using Wordpress add-ons for our
website, including Woo Commerce
products; having Prime Xeon as a
website partner really helps.
Our attendance is relatively
low, sitting at about the 650 mark,
although that does represent a
growth rate of 800% since the launch
of the festival. This firmly places us
in the micro music festival genre,
and makes visitor safety a fairly
gentle affair, allowing us to operate
safety and security as an in-house
team run by people who have
managed some significant royal
events. Disclosing details, as you can
imagine, is a highly sensitive issue,
but the team’s collective CV would
reassure organisers of events many
times bigger than our own.
What ground protection do you
use for cars and footfall?
We are very fortunate to have
excellent drainage - it was designed
that way 200 years ago - plus the
naturally sandy soil in that part of
Bedfordshire means that we can
park all vehicles on mown parkland
without risk of them getting stuck.
How do you publicise the event?
We use many of the traditional
methods to let people know about
the event such as flyers, banners
and posters, but we have also used
paid targeted advertising on social
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