The Week in Light & Sound
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Announcing the festival's revival, Geoff Ellis, chief executive of DF Concerts and Events, said: “During initial planning discussions around the relaunch of Connect, we realised that we had to make some changes and to remaster the original festival proposition for today's audiences. One of the biggest considerations we had was around public transport and ensuring the event was accessible to festival goers from across the country. The Royal Highland Centre provides a purpose-built event site that is readily accessible by public transport for each of the three days. This not only makes it easy for festivalgoers to attend but hugely supports our ambition to deliver a more sustainable festival now and into the future.”
Bristol Fashion - The biggest music festival to ever take place in Bristol has been announced for this summer. Forwards, a new event on the city's Downs green space, will have a capacity of 60,000 over two days. The festival in September will be headlined by The Chemical Brothers and feature artists such as Little Simz, Jamie xx and Sleaford Mods.
COVID Concern - Theatres are being urged to continue asking company members to self-isolate if they test positive for COVID-19, amid concerns of the impact that removing restrictions will have on vulnerable people. Equity has warned it is "extremely concerned" at plans to abolish the legal requirement for self-isolation from this week and said it "expects the industry to continue to enforce" measures such as mask-wearing, testing regimes and sick pay for positive cases when needed.
Meanwhile, the union’s Deaf and Disabled Members Committee has urged venues and producers to continue with policies such as self-isolation with sick pay for people with COVID. It said that removing the legal requirement to do so means "clinically vulnerable people will be forced to take stricter measures to protect themselves and further miss out on job opportunities, socialising and fully engaging with society at large".
The union was responding to news that all remaining COVID restrictions in England are to come to an end, including the legal requirement to isolate if you catch Covid or are a close contact of someone with the virus. This will come into force from 24 February 24. Free testing will also be scrapped, as will the recommendation that public places use voluntary COVID certification.
Derry Life - Some of Londonderry's notable landmarks are to be transformed as part of an arts festival celebrating 1,000 years of the city's history. The Illuminate Festival uses digital animations projected onto the city's buildings to give life to some of the most dramatic moments of Derry's past. It gets under way on Thursday and runs over the next two weekends.
Organisers promise “something that's never been done here before”. “For us, it was also a chance to tell the story of this city in the most interesting way possible," said Ryan Vail of Visual Spectrum Studio. “We have so many amazing stories from the past, this was our chance to use our skills to bring them to life through animation and a format that everyone can enjoy.”
(Jim Evans)
22 February 2022
