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Huge Boost for Mersey River Festival
This included a massive increase in family facilities and children’s activities, a fully equipped performance stage offering a diverse and full programme of artists, running throughout the Festival’s three days and evenings, plus stunning large format building projections after dark.
It was the first year that the new events team from Liverpool Culture Company organised this event. “It was the 25th anniversary, 2005 is the ‘Year of the Sea’ and we wanted to refresh and revamp the event, make it more contemporary and broaden its appeal to a wider public than the traditional River Festival audience. We also wanted to increase the physical area,” says Lee Forde, general manager of Events for Liverpool Culture Company.
The result was that the Festival - staged in and around Liverpool’s famous Waterfront - attracted more people, interest and interactive participation than ever before. All elements were free to the public.
The 12 x 13 metre Alpha stage was supplied by Essex-based SRC and located at the Pier Head, in front of the City’s renowned ‘Three Graces’ and alongside the Mersey. It was the first time the Pier Head site had been included in the River Festival and it was highly popular.
The performance programme included a country music concert on the Friday evening featuring three local artists. On Saturday the main event of the international shanty festival took place, with performers from Italy, Ireland, Latvia and Liverpool. The weekend was brought to a rousing finale by Ned Skelly and His Swing Orchestra on the Sunday.
For the first time, the Pier Head site also featured a huge ‘bouncy’ attraction area and a varied collection of continental market stalls, supplied by Geraed Markets, both of which were heavily patronised.
New water based activities were also introduced. In Salthouse Docks, these included Dragon Boat racing and plenty of fun with Hydrospheres – large inflatable spheres on which people can run on the water – similar to a hamster wheel!
Also new were a myriad of street performers, omnipresent throughout the three day event, a highlight of which was a guest appearance by SpongeBob SquarePants.
To deal with nearly 40 different acts over the three days, Liverpool Culture Company brought Manchester based sound and lighting rental company Audile onboard to supply sound and lighting for the Pier Head stage.
The system consisted of 12 stacks of Funktion One Resolution 5 PA, driven by XTA processors and powered by QSC amps. The monitor system featured Turbosound TFM450 wedges onstage and a Soundcraft MH4 console, and Audile also supplied a heterogeneity of over 60 microphones including Sennheiser radios, Shure, Beyer, AKG and Audio Technica’s, all looked after by Melvyn Coote . Front of house sound engineer Ben Emissah mixed using a Soundcraft MH3 console.
Despite many performers taking the stage in daylight, the decision was taken to provide a full moving light rig onstage – which greatly enhanced the overall presentation and look, coupled with a white upstage cyc. “The idea was to up the ante on all production elements,” explains Forde.
Lighting was designed by Audile’s Rob Leach. The rig included High End Studio Beam PCs and Martin MAC 500 profile moving lights, plus an assortment of PARs, Arri 2k Fresnels, Source Four 15 – 30 profiles for key lighting, plus smoke and hazers. The rig was controlled with an Avolites Azure 2000 console.
Audile also architecturally lit a selection of boats in Canning Dock, using Studio Due 2.5k City Colors, Mini City’s and 400 Watt HQI fixtures with blue lamps, all of which was run off an Avo Pearl in a dockside Portacabin.
Large format projection was supplied by local company Blueway, run by John Hodgson. He used two Pani PB6 6kW machines with AMD-32 slide changers to beam giant images onto the George’s Dock Building (actually the art deco exhaust flume of the Mersey Tunnel) and onto the Canning Dock side of the Maritime Museum.
Artwork was a selection of Liverpool Capital of Culture sponsor’s logos on George’s Dock. Onto the Maritime Museum, it was a series of specially created photo montages made from old Cunard posters dating back to the 1920’s and 30’s - the heyday of Liverpool’s cruise liner industry.
The George’s Dock projector was located in a former car showroom across the road, pointing upwards with the artwork heavily keystone corrected. The Maritime museum projector was originally set up in a dockside Portacabin . . . but Hodgson had to think laterally when Irish Navy Patrol Boat the ‘Ciara’ – one of the many nautical attractions - moored up directly in front of it for the duration, completely blocking the projection path! After some swift and diplomatic negotiation, the solution was to move the projector onto the boat’s deck.
All these elements were in addition to the traditional Mersey River Festival entertainment which included a sail past of tall ships and other vessels on the Sunday and the opportunity for visitors to explore many different commercial, pleasure and military vessels moored up for the occasion and take part in other River based activates.
Lee Forde comments: “The 25th anniversary of the Mersey River festival proved to be a great success with the re-vamp providing entertainment for all ages and interests. This was measured by the largest attendance in the festival’s history ….. watch this space for next year!
30th June 2005
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