kerry davies

I have been peripherally involved in environmental concerns since before Lovelock published "Gaia" back in 1979 and had friends living off-grid in some odd places including cities. I believe in doing things as consciously as possible and was bussing audiences into car free gigs 20 years ago. The concept of a "Green Theatre" model is to be welcomed even if over 15 years later than formal measures for events production like BS 8901. (Here comes the) BUT! I live in Mid Wales where middle class English incomers have bought productive farmland and "re-wilded" it into a boggy scrubland. The current fad is reintroducing wolves which were killed off here in 1390 when the population of England was 2.5M yet nobody is suggesting we cull 52M of they English to give wolves room. Having a "green" agenda for such an over-centralised sector as theatre when the sites of said theatres could be under water in less than a century and nobody might be travelling anywhere long before that is just swerving the issue. Again here in Powys we have a lobby group fighting against the council and Natural Resources Wales who have decided that managed withdrawal is the only solution at Fairbourne. The campaigners are mostly retirees and incomers so when the locals start in about Cantref Gwaelod they laugh until they are taken to Borth. Another mad example was when Prince did 21 nights at the Dome ostensibly to cut down the carbon footprint of his tours. 80% of his audiences flew in, most of them long-haul, it was a fiasco. You young 'uns really do need to get radical and fast, tinkering with energy saving is futile when the audience travels from all around the UK. Sustainability is only one third environmental, there is economic and socially sustainable which are equally important. You somehow have to square those three circles. Your best hopes may be streaming or VR or some new service but live events have to do a lot more than "Leave No Trace" and bio-diesel to survive.

As Musht writes, in the early 90's your question was valid but since the collapse in price and enormous rise in clarity, power and lens choice in video projectors even home theatre ones are an improvement on the early "industrial" behemoths. Besides which why project a single effect when you can project a million of them via video? Check out the work of Max Hattler and Noriku Okaku both with The Egg and without.

This is probably a bit leftfield but why do they need extra space for added social distancing for school age children who sit in classrooms every day cheek by jowl without masks? Bear in mind that the government want to end lockdown and that most people in the UK are too stupid to wear masks you may just be solving problems that won't exist by the time of the event. They just have to follow the same or similar guidelines to those given to schools and they should be OK. I may of course be completely wrong, nothing new there.

I personally like Star Shelters which can be erected fairly quickly and easily by two relative numpties (me and a mate). There are lots of suppliers but HERE be a video. What you describe is normally hired. To erect a circus style tent with sidewalls might be a bit too tricky for amateurs and would almost certainly take more bodies. Though you might try a PM to Imagineer Tom who knows a lot more about tents than me.

More than half the battle with image projection is the sourcing of that imagery. We used to spend days editing dozens of hours of recordings down to half hour loops of imagery and we weren't making them a focal point of a whole show. But once you have that sorted then my first thought would be to talk to AV companies about hiring until you know exactly what you need. I don't know but I am guessing that there will be deals out there and once you have found your ideal set-up they may well be happy to sell it you second hand. Be aware that to do it properly you probably need a dedicated vid mixer and things can get labour intensive very quickly indeed. To do a 500-1000 head two room club night with live bands and performers could easily take up half a dozen guys creating an environment. We regularly had four plus a vidiot.

The answer to that one, Bryson, is to slap a six inch nail on the desk and ask them which part of their forehead they would use if they aren't going to invest in a hammer. In your case you could just remind them that what they propose is illegal since they need to risk assess even the choice of access equipment. It seems at a glance that this employer tried to use the availability of on-line training as a get-out and may well argue that the fact that the teacher failed to avail himself of that was itself a breach of his "duty of care to oneself and others" under HASAWA. I used to emphasise that one's first duty of care is to oneself and that might become a factor in proportionality. (X was 50% to blame so gets only half damages) It will be interesting to see which way the judges call this one and as Roger says, a lot of school management will be on tenterhooks. The very idea of having to train teachers in industrial safety has far reaching ramifications. Up until now it doesn't appear to have occurred to many. My old HoDrama had to be locked out of my scaff tower store after he tried to put it up and I arrived to find him and three students up there as it wobbled unstably.

Just guessing but going by normal fines levels and the tiny amount of this fine the school is broke. Normally this sort of civil case where the employer has already been found guilty of the criminal offence is a walkover but blood and stones etc. In 2016 a school caretaker fell out of a loft hatch and later died. HSE and the judge thought that the ladder he was using had been left there by a previous user and it was not a real ladder but a stage prop. That resulted in £18,000 fines and about £12,000 costs even though the widow appealed to the court not to impose fines which deprived students of budget. The judge looked at the budget and took the money from "unallocated funds" in order to not penalise pupils.

PEDANT ALERT. I believe that Mike85 is getting into deep water by asking questions on questions and is entering not just Health and Safety but power areas which are "If in doubt, consult a qualified professional" territory. We carry warnings worded thus on Electrical and Safety forums for precisely this reason which probably apply here. Mike, I admit to being an old f@rt and very safety conscious but if you need to ask the sort of basic questions you are posing then it really is best all round to get in a contractor. It will almost certainly be safer, more efficient and probably cheaper than going where you want from where you are now.

We have had this type of question before; boxing, wrestling, MMA even cage fighting and the answer always, always comes down to "do it full-on professional or don't bother". The rigging is 99% of the problem in that you need lights directly over the ring or you blind your audience if not the fighters. This means that normal venue overhead lighting is better than stands, however tall. Stands and especially tall ones introduce H&S plus security in that fight fans tend to like fights and have been known to do a bit themselves when excited. The lanterns themselves are a tiny part of the issue so worrying about which ones or how to control them before you solve suspension is putting the cart before the horse.

Sandall is right on several counts especially ambient light being a killer. When we filled churches with trees and bushes or even just removed all the pews the effects of strong direct sunlight were amazing. The beams and rays gave the space a wonderful ambience. You couldn't actually see the stained glass windows but it looked great inside. To see the windows themselves best needed bright but indirect sunlight. For that reason, if no other, I would avoid theatre lights like the plague. If you wanted great effects in mist and fog then yes, use beams but otherwise I would look to floodlight the immediate interior at the window and avoid direct light entirely.

Melvin Benn wants the government to insure the festivals. Never knew Melvin to be that optimistic.

Excess mortality in England is 42.3% more than normal. In Wales it is 4.3% higher than normal so why is England in such a rush to put dates before data? When asked why Wales was being more cautious than England my local AM and Education Minister replied; "Wales is following UK/SAGE scientific guidance." She refused to make any further comment.

Courtesy of the PSA. The lobbying of government to extend VAT reductions and seek further support continues with an emphasis on next week's budget and it is fairly obvious that Solstice is going to be far from a return to "normal". I too don't expect to see full-on events this Summer, there just isn't time to get everything back up and running.

Please bear in mind a few minor things. All this is down to the EU implementing what was agreed by the Westminster government. That government has yet to even begin to implement their side of the deal because they are incapable of doing so. The IT systems for customs are years late and don't look like being ready for years while the UK is simply not charging import duties etc. In under 6 weeks the first "grace period" ends while on first July the second one closes and the UK has not a hope in hell of being ready. This mess is not going to be sorted anytime soon. When KB Events are exporting half their fleet and thus half their jobs it should tell you that things are serious. Why is anyone even mildly surprised that EU companies are treating the UK like "the rest of the world"? Don't hold your breath, things could well get worse.

Memory loss? I joined in 1974 and huge chunks of Health and Safety Commission publications had been copied verbatim from PO Telephones Civil Service literature during the introduction of HASAWA. We had safety officers and endless safety courses from day one. I missed my initial pole-climbing course but did pole testing, rigging, flat roof access, 4 or 5 different MEWPS, road signage and traffic lights, WaH organisation and supervision, electrical hand tool safety, equipment inspection and audit, electrical installation safety and much more. In Cardiff we had the best work based St John's Ambulance team in the UK and had constant catch-up sessions. Perhaps I saw it more having worked at big and small engineering facilities previously and even GEC Reliance were like a cowboy outfit compared to when I joined up. The contrast between then and now, even in a conscientious company like Ford, is incredible. There just is no comparison between say a 1960's steelworks and the same era PO Telephones even the vans changed in '69 from green to yellow for safety reasons. They were years ahead of the curve. PO Telephones became PO Telecommunications in 1969 becoming British Telecommunications in 1980/81 and became British Telecommunications PLC in 1984.

Warning, miserable old scrote typing. This is not a business to get into unless you really have to, wanting is not enough. A friend used to say that it was like getting into the circus ring and getting sawdust in an open wound. Either that wound festers and you never go back or the sawdust hooks you and no matter how many times you leave you always get dragged back. If you really must work in the business then get as wide and broad a grounding as you can. I did a lot of amdram, semi-pro and pro LX work but my main bag became outdoor events production and from that Health and Safety. Had I known this in 1965 I would have stayed in school, gone to uni and become an EHO/Licensing Officer but in 1965 we hadn't invented the industry. Catch 22. At various points in my travels I have been an electrician, carpenter, scaffolder, LD, sound engineer, truck driver, tractor/fork lift/telehandler driver, elevating platform driver, site manager, safety manager, production manager, diplomat, counsellor and nursemaid. The big lesson I learned was persistence. The majority of people who enter this game do not get past 45. They have this unreasonable desire for a life/marriage/kids/home or even regular meals. Look around and count the number of old heads like Junior or Paul then count the numbers of graduate technicians coming out of education every year. I don't think it an exaggeration to say there are more college courses than there are technicians who make retirement at 65 and each course bangs out more into the business than ever retire from it. My sorta dorta seems typical of today's career paths, more like a crazy paving than a path. She has begun and quit after two years on two wildly differing degrees and is now doing another remotely. She has worked in the Biz rubbing shoulders with stars and swanning along the Croisette but has ended up in a very responsible, highly paid role with a Cotswold house and a great partner. It is several light years away from The Biz.

One of my friends in the amateur theatre was an expert in carving thick polysterene sheets with a chainsaw into fireplaces and the like. I am well out of the scene now but they recently insulated our council flat in Jablite and I wondered at the time if that would make a safe alternative? Anyone know?

As I was coming to the end of my time at BT one of the new breed of graduate numpties found they had no record of my ever having done the initial pole climbing course. Now I was climbing poles before I got to BT then spent 3 years doing nothing much but climb poles then 13 years supervising others climbing poles and 5 years auditing others' safety in climbing poles. I had to spend a fortnight at Bletchley Park with a group of spotty estuarine oiks just to get the tick. I then "retired". I left to join an events production organisation training non-technical students purely because they could not find anyone in events/theatre in South Wales with any safety training at all 20 years after HASAWA. The "kids" laughed at me when I handed them a paper with a record of that month's training achievements but the boss told them they were all certified which seemed to make them happy. It took 20-25 years from HASAWA, when Pilbrow wrote his book, before safety was taken seriously by anyone in theatre or events and even now there are areas of reluctance. Personally I like to talk about the Health, Safety and WELFARE At Work Act. Important bit often missed out.

There would be very little difference in H&S at work anywhere in any industry until you get back to pre-HASAWA in October 1974. You need to be a lot more specific about what sort of information you seek and what precise periods. The laws around theatre H&S date back to AD 27 and the Fidenae disaster. Look it up.

The Chief Executive of the Cold Chain Federation.He seems to think we may get these Day 1 teething problems sorted by Day 18,263.

I agree you have to make the best and suggest you all follow the advice of government ministers and shut down in the UK and move to the EU. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/23/brexit-hit-firms-advised-government-officials-set-up-shop-in-eu ' I disagree that it is details, the idea of estranging ones economy from one's closest and largest market is fundamental and fundamentally crazy. People voted for estrangement and friction, barriers and borders. They may not have wanted that but to anyone old enough to know what it was like before we joined it was evident. If anyone thinks that making the best of things will work they might need to look at the timeline which shows us tied to EU terms and conditions until at least 2037.

Thanks, Nat. To take this off the high gas onto simmer there are a few things we might care to remember. Voting Leave has taken the UK back to almost as things were in the 1960's before we invented this industry. I say almost because in those days (as a senior MD reminded me once) there were a couple of hundred of us racing around in old ambulances doing gigs on USAF bases or months long residencies in Hamburg. There weren't enormous gert rock tours or the international trade associated with them and that MD didn't have 1,200 freelance sound and lighting guys on his books alone. We could do the paperwork, get torn apart by the customs drug squad and be on the road again in an hour (almost!). Nowadays even Paulears is talking about seven and a half tonners and Tom the Tent is seeking local crew in Switzerland. It is a different world and "alas" the UK has chosen not to be part of it any more. Whether that is a good thing or not is the politics but the fact is things can never be the same unless we rejoin. The promises of frictionless trade whilst leaving the SM and CU were always lies. Brexit in any form introduces barriers, the NI protocol creates borders and the politicians and people of the UK (England) voted for it overwhelmingly. That being so we now find ourselves a Third Country just like over a hundred others and need to adjust our approach with that in mind. We introduced these restrictions and visas and any possible "discrimination", they are consequences of our actions. Where I think BR might be a future resource is if we are all open and honest about our difficulties and how we surmount them. How did Tom get his trucks unloaded, what did Paul do about his load? Maybe, if we build up enough knowledge the Mods might think about a members only forum thread where people may ask and give experiential advice? I am retired so it does not affect me but what do you guys think?

Double trouble.

In the interests of Forum rules and general decency I am hereby self-moderating this post on political and foul language grounds. By the way Paul isn't Therese Coffey your MP? Oops, blown it on both counts.

I have used Zoom with the kids but in my role as old f@rt tenant rep the council is banned from Zoom and has to use Team with which I have had difficulty. Before setting up all sorts of systems it might be an idea, being a sort of public body, to ask the IT folks just what you are or are not allowed to do. I have asked why not but the housing people just say that they can't use Zoom or anything else but Teams on the council's IT network.