26 Feb Music Festivals

For over 20 years, Imaginators have been the approved supplier of all stage and festival branding to two of the world’s largest music festival promotors – Live Nation and Festival Republic. No other promotor manages more iconic festivals. Reading and Leeds Festivals are perhaps one of the UK’s largest. A pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds – the events take place simultaneously on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend, sharing the same bill with an attendance in excess of 150,000 people.

Each stage whilst identical in size and construction has a different colour scheme to identify its location when broadcast on television. Imaginators have worked closely with the client and the stage provider to develop innovative methods of production to ensure maximum impact.

New for 2021 was the introduction of two mainstages each with large video screens and a curved profile returning on-stage. As a result, there were many changes to the stage structure from previous years and new stage scrims would be required for both sites.

The brief was to design and produce branding seamlessly to cover the entire 70+ metre width of the stage. Maintaining strong strength of branding whilst retaining the ability to be ‘dropped’ if required due to adverse weather conditions.

A scrim format was designed where the main areas of the stage were covered in just three large sections. These were incorporated for the first-time with integral stage leg wraps to cover vertical truss from audience side view also avoiding the use of unsightly fixings. Solid and opaque materials were chosen throughout in this way sunlight from behind would not ‘ghost’ through and make the shadow of the stage truss visible. In order to facilitate the lowering of scrims, fixings are required to support vertical lines of Catenary at regular intervals.

Imaginators have this year developed an innovative re- enforced weldable webbing which has integral self-wound loops to which Carabine clips are fitted, this increases the number of support points, reduces billowing and delivers greater control when rigging.

Our crew also worked alongside the on-site rigging teams to ensure the clients expectations were met on the day. Project Management team and involved close liaison with production, stage, screen and AV contractors. Comprehensive drawings were prepared, circulated and amended in line with evolving technical and structural changes.

Our work with Live Nation and Festival Republic includes Wireless Festival, Download Festival, Latitude Festival, Longitude Festival together with global and UK tours for Beyonce, Arctic Monkeys, Stereophonics, Mumford & Sons, Liam Gallagher, Ed Sheeran, Robbie Williams and Sam Fender.

In addition, Imaginators also provide branding to many other music festivals including Glastonbury, Isle of White Festival, TRNSMT and Board Masters Festival.