General

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14 March 2016

The show is now over 85% sold - almost five months ahead of its four-day run at Earls Court from 11-14 September. Confidence that PLASA 2011 will be a busy event is confirmed by the increase in visitor registrations, with 8500 visitors representing a healthy 5% increase on the same period last year. This is matched by a 14% increase in the number of companies confirmed to take part.

PLASA 2011 event manager Sophie Atkinson comments, "The PLASA Show has a unique reputation for launching ground breaking products. The Show embraces everything from theatre, live music, film/TV and special events to night venues, architectural installations and construction projects. It's a true reflection of a highly d

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14 March 2016

In the past seven years, Eakins has worked at both Total Production International magazine and AED Rent. "I am very much looking forward to the future and taking the i-Pix brand strategy forward," she states.

i-Pix founder and director Chris Ewington says, "I'm delighted to welcome Hannah on board. We are continuing to focus on bringing a range of different and unique products to the market and working very closely with lighting designers and specifiers in all disciplines, particularly the entertainment, rental and

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14 March 2016

A team of staff from AC-ET's specialist lighting, audio, rigging and video sales divisions were on hand to discuss the vast, multi-million pound stockholding of over 200 leading brands available from the company's High Wycombe and Leeds offices, and the super-fast round the clock service and support for which the company is renowned.

Jonathan Walters, sales director for A.C. North, comments, "We had a really good show, with the new products on our stand attracting plenty of traffic and interest as it was the first UK appearance for many of them."

The new Jands Vista v2 software - of which this was the UK launch - caused a stir,

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14 March 2016

This is to help service the increasing amount of work PSI is doing in southern Ireland, enabling a true 'all Ireland' operation, which will run in conjunction with the Belfast office and warehouse in Carryduff. The two locations are under two hours apart by road.

This Dublin base is being managed by Ciaran Tallon. He has been in the lighting and production industry for 24 years with active experience as a freelance technician, lighting operator and designer and as project manager working on tours, corporate events and installations, and for the last 12 years as hire manager with his previous company.

PSI's Brian Reilly states, "It's great to have someone of Ciaran's calibre on board. We've been considering this move for some time, and wit

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14 March 2016

On Saturday 18 June riders will depart from The National Theatre London and travel to the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds. They will travel to Norwich where they will have a backstage tour of the Theatre Royal. After an overnight stop, riders will journey to Castle Acre where they will have coffee with Jane Slattery. Then it's on to Nottingham for a complimentary lunch and tour courtesy of Eric Oldham of Metool Reels.

If you're not available the first weekend, why not join the ride on Friday 24 June in Cardiff? The riders will cruise to Swindon Mechanics Institute. From there they will travel to Stratford u

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14 March 2016

"I am really looking forward to working at Black Light on a permanent basis," says Calder, who has worked with the company in a freelance capacity in the past. "It's a really friendly and energetic company that is growing strongly and I look forward to boosting the capacity of my department and helping our clients put on really spectacular shows, conferences and other productions."

In the past, Calder has worked as head of lighting at Edinburgh's Gilded Balloon and as Tec

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14 March 2016

Button joins PRG with 18 years experience in lighting and AV production across corporate, exhibition, touring music, television and theatre with clients including O2, Deloitte and General Motors, and tours such as Primal Scream, The Chemical Brothers and Jay-Z.

In addition to design, Button is an experienced and accomplished operator of lighting desks and media servers, as well as having extensive knowledge of video & lasers.

Button joins the team under John McEvoy, head of full service for PRG, alongside Neil Harvey who has been with the group since 2008, working on projects including the BAFTAs, G20 Summit and BAE Systems Exhibitions.

Having worked for PRG since 2007, Chris Scott is also joining the team as a

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14 March 2016

The deal boosts LS-Live's stock of staging and trussing equipment so that it has become one of the largest staging rental companies in the marketplace. The company, which offers complete staging solutions for festivals, concerts, theatre productions and corporate events, now stocks ranges of Space Roof, Dome Roof, Mini and Midi stages, and staging equipment that comprises 17,500sq.m of Layher Event Deck alone.

Andy Nutter joins LS-Live as operations director, having headed up Acorn Event Solutions since 2006, during which time it has provided staging solutions for Swansea's BBC Proms in the Park, Leeds' Opera in the Park, the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Frieze Art Fair, the Silverstone Grand Prix, Mini's 50th Birthday at Excel in London a

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14 March 2016

The company now offers a range of 12 competitively priced mobile stages. Sizes now available are from 8m x 6m up to the 15m x 12m SAM stage. Included in the acquisition were cable ramps & front of stage barrier all of which can travel inside the stages along with motors and risers offering a saving in transport costs and 'one stop shop" to event organisers.

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

The award was presented to inspHire on Saturday 7 May at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London by award sponsors HSS and host Paul Ross.

The Hire Awards of Excellence are designed to y recognise excellence throughout the hire industry. The award acknowledges the success of inspHire as a supplier to the hire industry and is one of the industry's most sought after accolades.

Chris Branson, CEO of inspHire commented, "This particular award means so much to us as it is voted on by our existing customers and reflects how well thought of we are in the industry. We take great pride in our customer service and to have this recognised is a fantastic pat on the back for all of the team at inspHire who work so hard."

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

Drawing on unprecedented access to more than 2.5m anonymised ticketing transactions, the report's main findings are as follows:

Large-scale live music across all regions of the UK attracts at least 7.7m attendances by domestic and overseas music tourists

Collectively they spend £1.4bn during the course of their trip

This is a positive contribution of £864m (GVA) to the national economy and equivalent to 19,700 full-time jobs

Although 5% of all music tourists come from overseas, they contribute 18% of total music tourist spending

From these findings UK Music has issued a list of recommendations to Government - including the implementation of a national live m

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14 March 2016

The Robe Product ReferenceApp contains comprehensive information and statistics covering the full Robe product range, including an entire catalogue of 'key data' in the form of one sheet with all the essential technical information you need to know about Robe. The App also has user manuals, DMX charts, gobo layouts, etc. and allows users to download and hold as much reference information as they need.

Photometric charts, video demonstrations and assorted other information will be added in the coming weeks.

It is intended as "an invaluable tool for lighting designers, operators, programmers and technicians who are on the move, enabling them to have the crucial facts and figures at their fingertips wherever they are". These can then be used for a myriad of

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14 March 2016

Following an accident involving a via ferrata on the 5th of May 2011, Petzl launched a voluntary product safety alert to all users of the SCORPIO via ferrata lanyards (L60 and L60CK) manufactured prior to March 2005 and all Absorbica energy absorbing lanyards manufactured before May 17th 2011 up to serial number 11137****.

As a consequence Petzl has decided to take the following actions:

1. Temporary stoppage of all Petzl tear webbing lanyard production.

2. Temporary stoppage of the sale of all stock of SCORPIO and ABSORBICA tear webbing lanyards for inspection before resuming sales.

3. Extension of the product safety alert of 13.05.11 to include all Petzl SCORPIO energy absor

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14 March 2016

Goudy is a familiar face to Nexo's employees, distributors and customers, having acted as the company's PR and communications consultant since 1997. Armed with a Eurostar season ticket, she will now take up a wider remit to develop NEXO's marketing strategy across its varied international marketplaces, and work to enrich client relations, communications and customer support.

Well known in pro audio circles, Goudy's career as an independent press agent has spanned three decades, and includes many memorable figures and events. Since her first PR appointment, to Rupert Neve, she has witnessed the rise (and fall) of the recording industry, the arrival of digital audio technology and the launches of pioneering products like the Neve Capricor

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14 March 2016

The event, more than double the capacity of previous Big Weekends, will feature six stages of music. The majority of the tickets for BBC Radio 1's Hackney Weekend 2012 are being allocated to people living in Hackney and the surrounding boroughs. The announcement was made during a special simulcast broadcast by BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra from the Olympic Park.

Radio 1 and 1Xtra's controller Andy Parfitt said: "This is the most ambitious event in the station's 44-year history. We aim to enhance the overall London 2012 s

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14 March 2016

It's just a year since members of PLASA and ESTA voted to merge the two Associations, and in the intervening 12 months, PLASA has reinvented key elements of its operations introducing a new membership structure, a new Governance system and election process, granting the vote to Organizational and Individual members, and launching a complete new PLASA logo and identity.

Whilst the day will reflect on the achievements of the last year, it will also invite members to feedback on what they'd like to see PLASA doing for their specific business sectors, additional services they feel should be offered and the role they'd like to see PLASA taking in the wider industry.

The formalities however, are a relatively small part of the

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14 March 2016

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14 March 2016

Calloway comes to the post from the Greensboro, North Carolina offices of Tyco Electronics, where he served as that company's product manager.

"My role today with Liberty effectively brings all the skills I've developed over the course of a very satisfying career together into one place," Calloway said on his first day on the job. It's like I've come home to where I was always meant to be. My experience within the Network/IT infrastructure industry will definitely be an asset in terms of helping Liberty's drive to smooth the transition to digital within the AV marketplace."

(Jim Evans)

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14 March 2016

Introduction to DMX & RDM (Wednesday 29 June) - This training day covers all the basics of the DMX and RDM protocols. Aimed at people who are new to the technology, it will start from the beginning of DMX, explain how it works, how it can be used and will highlight good working practices. The second half of the day will cover the new protocol RDM and show how this will benefit the industry.

Colour-Tramp (Thursday 7 July) - Artistic Licence Colour-Tramp control system is specifically designed to enable you to programme and control two and three dimensional lighting arrays.

DALI (Wednesday 5 October) - DALI training was the first of the Artistic Licence Engineering Training Days and has been so popular that extra dates have been added and an expl

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14 March 2016

The LEDView510 is a flexible routing switcher and interface for connecting LED screens to almost any HD and SD video source; it takes the feature set of that product and adds a number of key enhancements, most notably a multiple-unit mode with auto-zoom functionality. This allows several LEDView510s to be connected together, each powering its own LED screen. A wall of up to four screens high by four screens wide can be created, with a maximum screen resolution of 7680 x 4800. "With low latency and genlo

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14 March 2016

Show Atelier also took the opportunity to announce the winners of their online Get Your Own Vista competition, which Jands Europe sponsored with the donation of the first and second prizes - a Jands Vista M1 console with an 128 channel dongle and a Jands USB-DMX interface with 128 channel dongle respectively.

The two open day workshops took place in different venues, the first at Moscow's Fomenko Theatre and the second at the Theatre & Arts College # 60.

Each day started with an in-depth presentation by Jands Europe's Neil Vann on the Vista v2 software and its many possibilities, with an overview of the power and simplicity that this dynamic control system offers.

Areas covered included tracking b

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14 March 2016

Set-exchange was set up by lighting designer and production electrician Peter Harrison. He told The Stage, "The idea came from me working with some of the small companies as well as the big companies and seeing waste in one and scrimping and saving from the other, so it came out of trying to share resources."

Set-exchange is structu

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14 March 2016

The background to the document lies in the introduction of new EU Directive and national legislation regarding AOR, and the subsequent agreement, by manufacturers attending a presentation that PLASA's Ron Bonner and the Health Protection Agency gave at the PLASA 2010, that guidance should be created.

In short, the new legislation requires employers to assess the exposure to the workforce of AOR and if the exposure is believed to be above permitted levels, the employer will need to measure the levels and take action to reduce the exposure. Manufacturers will also have a duty to supply relevant safety information. In the UK this is enshrined in health and safety law, but will also be part of the conformit

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14 March 2016

Built to house works created by its namesake, sculptress Barbara Hepworth, as well as other British contemporary artists, visitors will be able to augment their visual experience through a variety of multi-media talks, presentations and lectures in the Charcoalblue-designed auditorium.

Charcoalblue's design director, Gavin Green, collaborated with Chipperfields to deliver a balance of style and technical wizardry in the space. Green, who is fresh from the launch of the RSC's new 1,000-seat theatre, says , "Working alongside a world-respected, multi award-winning architectural firm like Chipperfields has been an honour and an extremely rewarding learning experience. In addition, contributin