Artists already on board include:

FOO FIGHTERS, MUMFORD & SONS, IRON MAIDEN, MUSE, SPICE GIRLS, KEANE, THE 1975, JACK GARRATT, IMOGEN HEAP, PASSENGER, GENESIS, THE LEVELLERS,  SIMPLE MINDS, QUEEN, ADAM LAMBERT, BILLY BRAGG, STEREOPHONICS, TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB, LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM OF FLEETWOOD MAC, FRANK TURNER

Industry figureheads David Stopps, Ian McAndrew and Tom Schroeder, alongside Andrew Lenthall and Mike Lowe from Stagehand, began the #ILoveLive Prize Draw campaign to help raise funds for all the music stage and road crew in the live music events industry that have been affected by the pandemic.

The Beacon Jams were a hugely successful 8-week ‘virtual residency’ presented by guitarist and singer-songwriter Trey Anastasio (AKA lead singer of Phish) and MSG Entertainment in New York City’s iconic Beacon Theatre. The shows were live-streamed free exclusively on Twitch at 8 p.m. every Friday through October and November 2020. The artist played with varied arrangements of his Trey Anastasio Band (TAB), adding and changing line-ups and special guests each week, offering a dynamic mix of live music and interactive entertainment. With up to 12 musicians onstage and the immense challenge of playing live with no audience in such a famous venue, production and lighting designer Marc Janowitz from E26 Design thought out of the box!

Lighting designer Hugh Taranto lit a vibrant array of artists performing on the Sydney Stage for the 2020-21 Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)’s New Year’s Eve broadcast. The high-profile event culminated in a jaw-dropping pyro spectacular fired off the Sydney Harbour Bridge, stretching right across Sydney Harbour … watched in awe by millions across Australia and worldwide. This year the event was named “We Are One” following 12 gruelling months that started with raging bushfires and ended with the ongoing pandemic. As the date neared, the very tough decision was taken to go ahead without a live audience, due to general Coronavirus concerns, then a fast-spreading local cluster developing in the days immediately prior meant that even plans for a limited capacity ‘local hero’ audience – nominated by communities – had to be dropped.

Front Porch Productions supplies control package for Christian artist’s series of four-date mini-tours
 

Helsinki’s Visual Monkeys design agency ramped up the visuals for Finland’s popular The Masked Singer TV show using Hippotizer™ Montane+ RTX and Karst+ Media Servers in December.
 

The challenges of producing entertainment in the pandemic has seen some incredible imagination and resourcefulness from the industry in creating Covid-safe working environments so at least some sectors have been able to keep working, one of which is television. In Pretoria, South Africa, the State Theatre’s 640-seat Drama Stage hosted the rounds and finale of the 2020 Idols SA, complete with a lighting design by Joshua Cutts of Visual Frontier and technical production delivered by Dream Sets for SIC Entertainment. This sixteenth series was directed by Gavin Wratten.

RailCam Robotic Systems is based in New Jersey and is an acclaimed provider of moving camera systems to live TV events across USA. RailCam owns several NEWTON stabilized camera systems and the last year they have for example provided them on cable suspended platforms and telescopic rail systems to the Oscars and the Democratic National Convention. For the broadcast of Superbowl 2021, they brought one Mini-C and four NEWTON stabilized heads mounted on telescopic towers and rail systems, placed around the stage of the halftime show with the artist The Weeknd.

The first large scale indoor live music event in South Australia since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Aus Day In The Arena ran two shows at The Adelaide Entertainment Centre on January 26. Assisted by the Australian Government through the National Australia Day Council and supported by the Government of South Australia, Department of the Premier and Cabinet, the massive free event was headlined by Birds of Tokyo and saw 5,000 book in for each 2 ½ hour extravaganza, with performances at 12:30 and 6:30 pm. Novatech Creative Event Technology delivered a one-stop-solution for staging, video, projection, lighting, audio, and comms, all while streaming the event live.

Under the motto "On the road to ISE" it was the first trip in months for most of the participants of the AV Innovation Days, which did not lead to Barcelona but to Lindlar. At the invitation of LANG AG, manufacturers, rental companies and system integrators came to Lindlar to find out about new products and innovations.

Novatech rigs K Series for main arrays and Syva for delays to provide even coverage to festival-goers placed in ‘Party Pods’
 

Ten thousand lucky music fans in New Zealand were delighted to be able to kick off their 2020-21 summer festival season with the Downtown Shakedown event in Wellington where a lively and diverse line-up included dub-tastic Fat Freddy’s Drop and rising star singer-songwriter BENEE who joined popular favourites L.A.B., Ladi6, Sola Rosa and Sunshine Sound System to welcome everyone to Waitangi Park. The brand-new event – which celebrated being able to stage live music shows again due to New Zealand’s very efficient containment of Coronavirus – was organised by Precision Live which is run by Andrew Tuck who also produces Homegrown, one the country’s major annual music festivals.

When Ferrari’s Mugello Circuit made its debut in last year’s Formula 1 championships, the Italian luxury sports car manufacturer was looking for a high-quality, cost effective solution that could capture all the exciting motor sports action in 4K.  Searching to find cameras capable of providing ultra-crisp and clear broadcast quality images for the safety, security and control teams at the circuit, Mugello turned to MarCam Europe, one of Marshall Electronics exclusive distribution partners in the region. MarCam specified over 40 Marshall CV630-IP and CV420-18X cameras, including weatherproof housings and PTZ controllers.
 

Finland’s biggest touring circus, Sirkus Finlandia, completed a successful tour of the country late last year with a lighting rig composed almost entirely of Ayrton fixtures. The Ayrton products were supplied and supported by Ayrton’s exclusive distributor for Finland, Oy Lafoy Ltd of Helsinki.
 

When asked if there is a problem with people leaving the industry due to COVID-19 Duncan answered that, “Freelancers have been forced to find work elsewhere. In a recent survey of 2,800 people over 30% of freelancers said they have had to leave the industry, and 20% say they hope to come back but are very unsure whether they are able to because of the lack of certainty.” #WeMakeEvents is currently verifying the data from this survey and will be publishing the full report in the coming weeks. 

When the new Biden-Harris administration asked New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander to play “You Get What You Give” at their January 20^th virtual “Parade Across America,” producers ESM Productions and A/V provider Synergetic stepped in to help make it happen. “Scott Mirkin, President & CEO of ESM Productions, had seen our new studio streaming space and called just a few days before the Inauguration as he thought the stage would be a good setting for the New Radicals performance,” comments Jason Weldon, President and CEO at Synergetic. “When he came in to refresh his memory, as soon as he walked in he said he knew the space would be perfect.”