Totalling nearly 200 drapes of varying sizes, it's the Sowerby Bridge based company's largest single contract to date, with the work being delivered in four phases.
J&C Joel project manager Tony Griffiths, worked closely with ACCL production manager Gail Wroth to design curtain requirements for the various areas.
In the main 10,000 capacity Arena itself, the space needed to be turned into a variety of flexible formats including a complete 'black box', the traditional end-on stage D-shape format, in-the-round and sub-divided as a series of individual smaller performance spaces - all with curtains.
The main curtains supplied in the arena are designed to be multi flexible and can be joined together to create any format. To achieve this flexibility a 5m module system was applied. In this sense, each of the curtains are headed to either 5, 10 or 15m. In addition, each curtain also has their own light baffles to minimise seepage.
To optimise hanging the Arena curtains, J&C Joel supplied 320m of box trussing and 48 half tonne chain hoists and control - which provide the Arena's technical team with an endless array of masking configurations.
For the 16 break-out and meeting rooms in the Conference Centre, J&C Joel supplied 6 x 4m fully demountable portable mini-stage systems, complete with backdrops, masking, tracking and curtains. Again, with flexibility in mind these can be moved anywhere in the building.
The 75 x 50m Multi-Purpose Hall (MPH) has a total capacity of 5,000 standing, and is utilised for a host of events from conferences and banquets to corporate presentations, receptions, after-show parties, seminars and live performances. It can be sub-divided into 6 smaller sections via a series of movable acoustic walls and doors.
The challenge faced by Tony Griffiths and Gail Wroth in here was how to be able to turn it into a performance space or a decorative function room quickly and efficiently, complete with full acoustic isolation.
Triple E Unitrack systems were installed along the windowed walls, attached to these were heavy duty Orion curtains giving a 95 per cent black out. To improve both acoustics and aesthetics, directly behind the Orions, a second track was installed, housing black wool serge drapes that can be pulled across to completely cover the whole walls/windows.
To offer the flexibility of being able to light the space from any position, a continuous 250m lighting rail with a SWL of 50kg per metre has been designed and installed in front of the tracking system.
(Jim Evans)
