What does event management cover at a big public show?
Event management, as we run it, is the difference between hiring some kit and handing over the whole job. On a show the size of the Rotherham Show, Rotherham's biggest free cultural festival, held every September in Clifton Park, that means the staging, the sound, the power, the crew and the paperwork all coming from one place, so the organisers deal with one supplier from first site meeting to last truck out of the park. We have handled the event management side of the show for years alongside RMBC, and it is the kind of job the whole company is built around.
The scale is worth spelling out. We have provided three stages for the show, including the main stage that the bigger musical acts and talent acts play on, each with its own PA, monitoring and backline power. Add the generators feeding them, the cabling run out across the park overnight, the lighting rigs and the crew who stay on site for the whole weekend, and the infrastructure list alone runs to a couple of lorries before anyone has hung a bunting pole. The show's organisers get one point of contact for all of it, and because the crew are ours, changes happen on the day with no third-party supplier to route them through: a band moves slot, a stage needs re-cabling, a power feed shifts to the far field, and it gets sorted while the gates are open.
The paperwork comes before the build, not after it. Risk assessments and method statements for the staging, the electrical work and the rides go to the organisers and the council's safety officers in advance, and every inflatable we bring carries its PIPA or RPII certification. Public liability cover sits at £5 million and 95 percent of the kit is owned and stored at the warehouse, so when somebody needs an answer on site there is no subcontractor in the chain to wait for. It is the same standard we work to for corporate clients like Amazon, the NHS and the BBC, and the same staging and PA kit gets built at venues like the NEC in Birmingham and ExCeL in London through the year.
What does DB supply on the funfair side of the show?
A show this size also needs things for families to do between the arena acts, and that is the other half of our work there. We have taken fun inflatables along for the whole event plus a small forest of deck chairs, and the queues for the Giant Helter Skelter, the Last One Standing Wipeout and the mega slides ran from gates open to gates shut every day of the show. Those three are regulars at big public events because they take high throughput, they suit children and adults, and they hold up to a full weekend of constant use.
What would we tell anyone planning a similar event?
Book the infrastructure early and be honest about the site. A build this size goes in across two or three days and needs vehicle routes, generator positions and noise limits agreed before the first stage leg touches the grass, so a fortnight's notice is not something we could take on, and neither could anyone sensible. September weather in South Yorkshire has a say as well: every stage and every canopy is rigged for wind, and power is planned around the wettest weekend, not the finest. Steven Singleton, who has worked with us on community events for years, put it better than we could: "they are good VFM and deliver a professional stage sound and lighting package for community events."
We run the same service at a smaller scale for galas and community events in Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley, Worksop and Chesterfield, and nationwide for bigger shows. If you are organising something with stages, sound, power or rides in it, call 0114 345 0135 or email events@dbentertainment.co.uk and we will talk through the site, or read more about the staging events service and the event and funday kit we bring to it.
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