For the second year running, On the Mount returned to Wasing, a rural, idyllic estate set in Berkshire, England. Across five days, the impressive stage nestled in amongst the greenery welcomed Crowded House, Paolo Nutini, Nick Mulvey, Jungle and Underworld.
London-based promoter Senbla appointed festival production agency The Fair to produce the series and our sister company, OPS, to fulfil all health and safety needs before and during the event. It was the first year the We Group were involved with the project, and all-in-all, it was a great success.
Wasing Estate, with their close connection to nature, offers concert goers a truly unique experience in the heart of nature. The woodland amphitheatre lends itself perfectly to outdoor concert shows and has a capacity of 6,000 concert goers. The Fair’s production team worked closely with the Estate team throughout, ensuring the event’s presence at the venue aligned with their ethos.
Individual Artist Touring Requirements: One of the challenges that OPS faced at the event was the different requirements of each artist’s touring party. All five artists had different operational requirements, so meetings were held before we arrived onsite but also onsite with all relevant teams. These operational meetings with the tour managers, WATF production team, OPS team and security teams addresses topics such as security riders, pyrotechnical sign offs and traffic movements. Each touring party had arrival and departure patterns that often fell outside the regular traffic access working hours and plans were put in place for each artist access needs.
Solstice Event Fire Safety: All five concerts had an element of live fire onsite, in the form of an open fire at the top of the natural amphitheatre. This was carefully reviewed by OPS and signed off once all requirements of H&S had been met. During the Solstice Event, the open fire held a far more important and central role to the evening. Nick Mulvey, the headliner of that evening’s concert was due to bless the fire and then carry a flame into a separate part of the site, where a satellite event was held throughout the night by a different group of organisers. OPS worked with the organisers of that part of the evening and security teams to ensure that any movement in the crowd with an open flame torch was managed and carried out safely.
Noise Management: One of the acts that performed at On The Mount at Wasing had particular requests when it came to noise levels during their performance. They wanted a particularly high FOH audience level which meant that OPS had to work with the Audio Engineers onsite to review the sound systems. We also implemented a very proactive monitoring throughout their set to ensure both onsite and offsite levels were within our licensed limits. The OPS director frequently travelled offsite with the Noise Mgmt. team to undertake readings and propagation tests, whilst being in constant communications with the FOH techs. That way we could ensure that we tweaked the line-array direction to get the best sound onsite whilst being within our limits and not creating unnecessary noise pollution for local residents.
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