The festival has stayed on its original site at the Cherry Hinton Hall Grounds, since it's inception by Ken Woollard in 1964. Whilst the organizers have striven to maintain the relaxed atmosphere for festival goers, behind the scenes of the festival site has changed beyond all recognition.
Pearce Hire supplied all the power requirements for the festival, which has increased immensely over the years, catering for this unusual site where most of the electricity comes from a mains substation, which was upgraded from a 300A to 500A in 1995 to cope with the growing demands in all areas.
This year Pearce Hire supplied a 250Kva twin-pack CAT generator for the stage lights, two 100Kva generators to ensure the BBC were afforded uninterrupted power for its extensive broadcasts schedule from the festival and 15 other generators off site for campsites, the internet café and the car parks.
Pearce Hire also supplied all of the lighting for the bars, food stalls, tower lights for the car parks and campsites and three live stages. The main-stage lights had grown (part of that increased power loading) as the BBC televised the performances. Stage lighting included 110 par 64 lanterns, ACL bars, Source 4 profiles, Martin MAC 600's and Martin MAC 550's with light-blinders for audience lighting.
Ken Rankin, production manager commented: "Pearce Hire knows the site so well and ensured that everything was in place for a successful Festival. The site was better than ever and we received lots of praise for the lighting and technical crew from everyone who performed."
Shaun Pearce commented: "Cambridge always manages to retain that special feel - even now it is 10,000 people a day, and we love working on it. The power on this site is a complex project that took our team 10 days to prepare, with some lengthy cabling runs, the longest being 400m. Everyone who worked on the event has up to date training and are very highly skilled in this specialist area. The team helped each other along throughout the whole event from set up to load out and it all ran smoothly."
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
