Jazz Café Festival 2025

Background

Now in our second year supporting Jazz Café Festival, We Are OPS were proud to return as a core delivery partner for the 2025 edition, providing full-service support across Safety Advisory Group (SAG) representation, health & safety management, event operations, and production and more.

We were involved from the early planning stages right through to build, live delivery, and break, working closely alongside The Fair on production to ensure a cohesive and collaborative approach across all areas of the festival.

Held once again in Burgess Park, this year’s event scaled up significantly, welcoming 15,000 attendees and featuring an expanded footprint, bigger stages, and an even more ambitious programme of live music. Masego, Westside Gunn, Brighter Days, Elmiene, and SKIIFALL were some of the many artists that took to the stage this year in Burgess Park.

Challenges

  • Scaling for a Larger Audience: With attendance increasing to 14,999 this year, our team adapted site infrastructure and safety plans to ensure the visitor experience remained smooth and safe at every touchpoint. This included larger stages, improved circulation routes, and enhanced ingress and egress planning.
  • Maintaining Public Access During Build and Break: The 2025 festival footprint extended over a section of public park that included an internal path used daily by the community. We successfully maintained access throughout the build and break periods by managing phased operations with our traffic and security teams.
  • Unexpected Egress: Following one of the headline performances, we experienced a significant surge in departing attendees. Our team responded in real-time by adapting the egress plan, reallocating resources, and reconfiguring exit routes to ensure a safe, efficient and controlled flow from the site.

Delivery

  • On-site Health and Safety Management
  • Licensing
  • Documentation including ESMP, Risk Assessments
  • Operations Manager
  • ELT meeting lead with police, council and contractors
  • SAG lead 
  • Traffic Management Plan 
  • Egress plan development and oversight 
  • Police SPS planning and liaison
  • Community engagement: we hosted the client's first day dedicated to community and local residents at Burgess Park

Results

  • Another sold-out, successful show
  • Increased audience capacity
  • Positive feedback from the client (see below)
  • Incredible audience feedback too (see below)
“Their knowledge and skill spoke for themselves, while the supportive and welcoming environment they fostered meant that even the toughest moments on site were handled with ease. We truly couldn’t have wished for a better team to deliver these shows.” – Rob Star, Promoter and Co-Founder of Elixar Events

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