Kicking Off Festival Season With PITP, Brockwell Live, and More!

It’s been a great start to this year’s festival season. In May, we provided top-quality sound design and technical production services for 12 live events (with 9 of them happening simultaneously in one weekend) and advanced over 80 high-profile artists!

Read on to find out what the team accomplished in this successful and incredibly busy first month…

Pub in the Park

Wimbledon

We kicked off May with the UK’s biggest food and music festival tour, Pub in the Park (PITP). The first of the 10 events took place in Wimbledon and hosted live music from Bananarama, The Feeling, Clean Bandit, Gabrielle, and more. 

Marlow

The second festival of the series was in Marlow. The highlight for us was advancing the backline for the Jacksons and seeing them play Heartbreak Hotel!

The PITP team, known for their entrepreneurial approach to events, organised a charity cricket match. We managed the sound for the match between Tom Kerridge and Chris Evans which raised vital funds for PITP’s charity, Meals for Marlow, which works to provide meals for people struggling to get food on the table every day. We’re so proud to have played a part in bringing the match to life with crisp, clear sound for the very entertaining commentary.

It was a great start to the PITP festival series, and we’re excited to continue supplying kit for the events and look forward to advancing the other great artists, such as Ronan Keating, in this summer’s remaining shows.

Shindig Festival

The AF Live team were brought on board to set up the sound systems for 2 of the 7-themed venues at Shindig Festival. Working with Jess from Shindig and the rest of the festival’s production team, we advanced 44 artists over the weekend. The line-up included Sister Sledge, Aphrodite, The Noise, OMC, Beans of Toast and many more who played on the festival’s legendary Dig Inn stage and new, but equally awesome, Naughtylicious stage. This is a wonderful festival, we felt incredibly welcomed and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the event.

Love Saves the Day

The 27th of May saw the team back onsite in Ashton Court at one of our favourite local festivals – Love Saves The Day! For this festival, we supplied the main stage sound system with our newly-purchased L-Acoustics K2 system using Kara for fills and delays, as well as advancing 36 artists that performed over the two-day festival, including headliners Fatboy Slim and Years & Years.

Brockwell Live

Brockwell Live is a collective of independent festivals with over 500 live acts taking place in Brockwell Park from 26th May – 4th June 2023. Created by the team behind Outlook Festival and Undivide, Project 6 kick-started the summer festival series with Electronica, Rap and Bass.

As the festival opened, it was fantastic to see our designs brought to life by the AF Tech Production team and supply partners. This event was particularly complex due to the tight scheduling and huge artist list. We are so pleased with our onsite team, who despite the challenge, delivered great sound quality and levels throughout the show, as well as enviable lighting displays that captured the hearts of the audience. 

As well as the inaugural Project 6, we also executed…

• Wide Awake – An explosion of leftfield indie, post-punk, electronica and techno
• Cross the Tracks – London’s #1 jazz, funk & soul festival
• City Splash – A celebration of Caribbean & African music, food & culture
• Brockwell Bounce – A 3-day family festival and the 5th event in the Brockwell Live series

Frythtival

A great local event headed up by John Murray and club members, hosted at the football ground in Nailsea. Artists including Corvus, Spencer Flay, The Piano Man and The Other Guys put on a fantastic show for the enthusiastic crowd. Not only was it a wonderful sunny day with great music, but the event also raised £7000 for the club, which will benefit the many young people and football teams who use the club regularly.

AF Live supplied an L-Acoustics sound system, backline equipment and engineers for the show. John, who organised the event, shares his thoughts:

“Thank you for delivering a fantastic sound and light system at our recent music event at Nailsea and Tickenham Football Club. Your sound and lighting engineers were superb, setting up and testing the system the evening before the event. They were a pleasure to have on-site to support us throughout the event. Please can you book us in again for the late May Bank Holiday next year.”

John Murray MBE, Finance and Planning Director at Nailsea and Tickenham Football Club.

Keep your eyes peeled for our event round-up in June where we cover Brockwell Live’s last live events of the series, Mightly Hoopla and Lambeth Country Show, and our 3 stages at Glastonbury! With over 30 live events planned this season, including Glastonbury, Boomtown and Tokyo World, it’s going to be busier than ever.