Loud Sound's event director Jim King commented: "We were very happy with the operation undertaken by Showsec at Camp Bestival. They had the right staff with the right attitude for the show and helped make it a pleasant and relaxed experience for all concerned."
Showsec supplied over 250 SIA licensed event security professionals to Camp Bestival, a new style of family oriented festival sited at Lulworth Castle on the Dorset coastline. The festival is the brainchild of promoter Rob da Bank, produced in collaboration with Loud Sound, and its standing results from it setting out from the start to cater for families, rather than adding feature areas for children as an afterthought. The site is designed with a series of children's activity areas and entertainment running throughout the days.
Whilst evening artists for the adults featured PJ Harvey, Florence and the Machine and the Cuban Brothers (who were carried through the audience to the stage on a Roman style divan by Showsec staff), the headline attraction of the 2009 weekend proved to be a Sunday morning appearance by Mr Tumble drawing 10,000 people to the main stage. He was followed by a full day of children's oriented entertainment leading into more mature bands for the adult audience in the evening.
This different style of festival required a different style of security, as Showsec's Paul Trippier, Camp Bestival's head of security, explained: "Inherent in Showsec's ethos is that no two events are treated the same, but this one required a radically different approach. We learned from the previous year and built on our experiences to produce a family focused crowd management plan.
"Going beyond the required CRB checks, we selected staff from our national staff-pool who were used to working with and are comfortable with children. We dedicated four teams to managing lost children, which was a priority and we succeeded in reuniting all families, most within 20 minutes to half-an-hour. Again it's a different skill required from our staff to care for the well being of stressed parents and children, contracting the last festival when our main challenges were probably alcohol related and the pit team were implementing crowd surfing procedures. My over-riding memory of this festival would have to be the pit team, whilst remaining ever vigilant, joining in on 'hands and shoulders' to Mr Tumble: priceless."
In addition to applying their friendly style of crowd management, a vigilant presence was maintained across the 42 acre camp site, which helped to reduce crime from the previous year (despite the event's increased size) and the quietest members of the Showsec's team were the two response teams on standby over the three days, such was the positive atmosphere at this most peaceful of festivals.
(Jim Evans)
