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New Look for Liverpool’s HUB 2006
Liverpool Culture Company staged its fourth action-packed HUB Festival celebrating street and urban culture and ideas at a brand new site with greater attendance and an increasingly diverse megamix of arts, sports and music.
The vibrant two-day event was located at the fabulous Otterspool Promenade waterfront location in Liverpool 17 – the first time the site has ever been utilised for an event of this stature.
It featured 20 bands; over 250 metres of graffiti wall, HUB’s biggest skate park to date, over 100 entrants in four sections of the Liverpool HUB Open competition vying for £4000 of cash prize money, a professional international B-Boy competition for the first time, a new dirt jump for BMXers and only the second Dirt Jump competition in the UK. The event attracted up to 12,000 people over the two days, breaking the previous 2005 attendance record.
Says event manager Kirstie Blakeman: “Communication with our audience is key to the success and growth we see each year at the event. We’ve utilised market research campaigns to identify what people want to see at the event and used this information to introduce new elements like the dirt jump and B-Boy competitions.”
LCC’s head of events, Lee Forde, adds: “Moving site offered many opportunities, which we seized in terms of upping the production values and delivering a true quality, highly dynamic event.”
Blakeman and Forde led the core events team which mainly consisted of Blakeman’s own team from within Liverpool Culture Company; deputy event manager Sue Whitehead, site manager Bill Howard and operations manager Nicola O’Boyle who were joined by production manager Neil Marcus of Red Man Events.
They co-ordinated everything from sourcing the new site to installing the entire infrastructure and technical elements needed to make the event run smoothly.
The new Otterspool Parade location offered many advantages apart from the increased capacity needed after the success of the 2005 event. A natural sunken amphitheatre along one half of the site allowed the splitting of the Festival into two music zones, which also enormously aided the noise containment between the areas.
The DJ/B-Boy area and main graffiti gallery – that started as over 250 metres of blank hoarding and scrap vehicles - was filled with colour, comment and expression by over 80 international artists. It was sited in the dip, and the music here was primarily DJ and Hip Hop orientated.
New for 2006 was a professional B-Boy competition, for which the main judge was US TV’s ‘Star Search’ winner, Do Knock. It attracted over 100 entrants in crews from as far afield as Martinique, Turkey, Belgium, France, Ireland, the length and breadth of the UK, plus a strong local challenge – fiercely battling their energy and physical dexterity out on the boards.
The main stage, skate park and dirt jump were right on the waterfront. The stage showcased a selection of rock, metal, thrash, grunge and speed punk bands, ranging from the best local talent to bands from the USA, Canada and Italy.
The skate park doubled in size from 2005 and was again designed by Neil Danns, a local and former World Skate Champion, and supported by Team Extreme. It featured skate furniture catering for all abilities from novice to exhibition standard, and was packed both days with in line skaters, boarders and BMXers of all ages and levels of experience. The Dirt Jump proved exceptionally popular, with the Competition evoking breathtaking standards and adrenalized acrobatics.
The main stage was an elegant single king pole purple membrane structure supplied by Wangos and chosen for its aesthetics. Blakeman explains: “This was a huge success last year, and we wanted to continue with a structure that was interesting and different looking.” The stage below measured 15 x 10 metres in size – and was designed to be large enough for smooth changeovers and yield enough side stage gear storage.
For the DJ area, LCC commissioned Alistage to build a special arched structure with a transparent skin. The dance platform in front was a 10 x 10 metre area also specially commissioned by LCC, and built by the Liverpool Scenic Workshop. A Steeldeck base was covered by a Harlequin dancefloor that was then clad in special ply and lino, creating the optimum breaking surface.
Over 55 graffiti artists from around Liverpool and the world converged on Otterspool Parade for HUB 06, with each allotted a space and a specific amount of materials to use for their works. They included Liverpool’s legendary Stok and Dudley, who helped co-ordinate the operation, and collectively they created an animated, multi-coloured collage of images, scenes, stories and political statements surrounding the site.
Once again, Manchester based Audile supplied Funktion One Resolution sound systems site wide for the three areas – Main Stage, DJ Area and Skate Park. “Resolution once again proved ideal for creating a great sound for a wide variety of music and styles,” says Audile’s Rob Ashworth. The main stage rocked with six Stacks of F1 Res 5 elements and a Turbosound monitor system, complete with a Soundcraft MH3 console front-of-house and a Yamaha M7 CL for monitors, plus a selection of wired mics including Shure, Sennheiser and Beyer, and Sennheiser radio mics. FOH was babysat by Stev and monitors by Francoise Le Moignan.
The DJ Area was serviced by a Resolution 4 PA, tech’d by Audile’s Jason Quinn. The area featured a selection of DJs throughout the weekend and was compared by Spycatcha. It included a freestyle rapping competition on the Saturday. The DJ kit consisted of Technics 1210 dex, a Pioneer CDJ 1000, and Allen & Heath Xone 62 mixer and Tannoy monitors.
In the Skate Park, competition commentaries were delivered via a stack of six Res 5 speakers in the ‘delay’ position behind the (main stage) FOH trailer. Strategic positioning of the main stage ensured that the live music worked perfectly as background and infill sound, leaving the Skate Park vocals clearly audible.
Other suppliers included Pyramid (power), L’s Kitchen (crew catering), Event Solutions (Barriers and toilets), SPS Proline (security), Paramount (stewarding), Roe Street Runners (stage crew) and St John Ambulance (medical).
“Having outgrown the Pier Head setting we had to find a new home for the event; somewhere with the space to grow and increase the activities whilst being comfortable for the audience,” says Kirstie Blakeman on their decision to choose the Otterspool Promenade and Park site that runs parallel to the river, just south of the city centre. HUB is its largest event to date.
Moving out of the city centre has also given HUB a more relaxed feel, with families mixing happily alongside generation X, all enjoying the activities on offer.
“Four years on, this event is firmly fixed in the events calendar - the interest and buzz it sparks in the city is incredible,” continues Blakeman. “We’ve listened to our audience and acted on their feedback which is vital to the event’s development and growth.” It’s an approach which clearly works as HUB continues going from strength to strength.
28th July 2006
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