Liverpool Culture Company's three day Mathew Street Music Festival is Europe's biggest free city centre music festival, annually attracting over 350,000 visitors over the August bank holiday weekend. Visitors watched artists spread over five SRC stages. Still a celebration of where it all began with the music of the Beatles, the festival, now celebrates a myriad of musical tastes from Abba to Tony Christie.
SRC and its fleet of mobile stages enabled the hugely complex logistical requirements of installing performance areas in the City Centre, which were operated and then removed - some within a 24-hour period. The scale of the operation is unparalleled in any city in the UK, with over 100 bands appearing on stages in five locations for eight hours a day.
SRC's Alpha Stage was erected at Pier Head for the duration of the bank holiday weekend festivities. The team hung a PA system from the stage wings, as well as installing the stage scrims, backdrop and a purpose built loading ramp for easy band changeovers.
An SL250 stage was loaded overnight in Derby Square, while other stages were installed on the Strand and into an additional site 'across the Mersey' in the Wirral. Lastly at 6am on Monday morning a SL200 stage was loaded into Water Street, a narrow Liverpool street that leads down to Pier Head.
Managing director of SRC, Jon Slater explained; "We worked through the night with a small crew to load the stages into the festival site in co-ordination with the police's traffic management system. The SL200 stage is very quick to load in and out so it was perfect for the job."
Eddy Grant, event manager of the Liverpool Culture Company, said: "The pre-event planning and site visits with SRC enabled us to develop an improved layout and timetabled get in that helped us to develop and expand the program to create our most successful ever festival."
Sister Company, Kiwi Crew provided up to six crew for the build up and load out of the stages. Stuart Stalker (Event Design Logistics) production manager for the Festival, added: "The professionalism of the Kiwi Crew on site during construction and deconstruction ensured the strict timelines were met with ease and greatly contributed to the overall quality of the experience for the public.''
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
