Access All Areas September 2019 | Page 45

STAGING SEPTEMBER | SECTOR FOCUS Ground-breaking developments have occurred in the in the staging sector lately. Access examines Star’s future, and catches up with Serious Stages FUTURE IN THE STARS Following the acquisition of Star Events (now Star Live) by David Walley, Access caught up with Pete Holditch, its head of structures What is the story behind Star Live? Star Live was created in summer 2019 from the merger of four established businesses; Star Events, Mobile Promotions, Beautiful Minds and BluePeg - all outstanding successes in their own fields. The opportunity to offer clients significant added value and complementary services in a rapidly evolving event landscape appealed to all the business founders. Star Live is a full-service live event and brand experience business. Trusted experts in creative, staging, production and people; we have brought these disciplines together with a proven team, state of the art equipment, years of experience and a passionate ‘can-do’ attitude. Star Live helps to create amazing experiences that wow audiences and turn customers into advocates. We will continue to supply industry leading stages and structures in terms of production capability, safety compliance and design to the world’s leading artists, events and brands. How will you do things differently? The fluidity seen in the festival and touring market sees the creation of standout events that provide content and experiences for increasingly connected and sophisticated audiences. This means ensuring new promoters and organisers are fully aware of our expertise and what we can bring to their events. One of the challenges in the sector is the rise of poorly designed and lightweight ‘stage’ products. This can lead to a distortion in clients’ perspective of the value in providing structures and services that are fully engineered, designed to industry guidance and of the highest safety standards. We will continue with our ongoing refurbishment and replacement programme for the existing stock, our VerTech roof architecture has all been redesigned and replaced in the last 12 months, our largest Mobile stage SS1512 SAM has undergone extensive refurbishment with introduction of new hydraulics and lifting mechanism and we’re always receptive the challenges that clients bring and relish the opportunity to target investment to deliver solutions to satisfy this need. Recent projects we have worked on with a difference are: Beach, Invisible Cities, Longines Global Champions Tour, Spice Girls, APE. What makes the companies that make up Star Live special? Star Events has designed 45