Now sponsored by Kickers, the UMA covers the broad umbrella of urban music forms, a spectrum extending from Gospel, Neo Soul to HipHop, and more. This year's awards were presented again by Radio 1 DJ Ras Kwame and neo-soul heavyweight Terri Walker, and featured numerous live performances from established as well as up-and-coming artists, UB40, Nate James and Keisha White amongst others.
This year, PSL took on responsibility for design and implementation, including all technical services. Led by John Montague and Hannah Spicer, the team handled all the logistics, including security and front-of-house management, and event production, in particular the generation of all visual content for the show. The creative department worked from Kicker's own advertising campaigns and web-based content, maximising the branding blend from electronic to live and broadcast.
Virtually every department of PSL was involved in some way with this year's UMA. Stage design and build was done in-house, integrating two large projection screens into the set which carried names and images of the award winners and nominees, as well as video clips and live footage of the presentations and performances of the evening.
A substantial d&b stack system was provided by System Sound, with Simon Biddulph mixing sound. The dramatic lighting was designed by Seb Williams. Vision director Steve Price managed a four-man camera team, capturing live material throughout the evening which was shown on the big screens, as well as recorded for DVD and future TV broadcast. All graphics were created by PSL designers specifically for use with the Hippotizer digital server.
PSL's project designer John Montague praised his team for "showing great creativity and flexibility under pressure. We had very tight deadlines and budgets for this show. However, we handled the challenges of the evening by being pro-active and practical, producing a fantastic event for all who attended."
(Jim Evans)
