Radio 1's Big Weekend keeps getting bigger

They were all in Carlisle though, for the Big Weekend, along with another 70 acts from right across the radio station’s musical map. Little surprise then that 800,000 people applied for the 40,000 day tickets. Oh, and Arctic Monkeys played a surprise set ahead of the billed action as well.

“If you live here, you’re probably very used to jumping on the train up to Glasgow, down to Manchester or across to Newcastle to see big level international acts,” live events editor at Radio 1, Neil Wyatt, tells Access outside the production office. “So for the BBC, there’s a fantastic impact on the back of us being able to bring artists like [headliners] Foo Fighters and Lady Gaga to Carlisle.”

The Big Weekend is Radio 1 made flesh. The Main Stage has the big daytime artists, the In New Music We Trust stage is for the bands you’ll hear played by ‘specialist DJs’, there’s the outdoor dance stage, which is exactly that, and finally the BBC Introducing Stage, there for the unsigned, under the radar artists.

“The most important thing about the Big Weekend is to take it to places that are undisturbed in terms of top level live music,” Wyatt explains. “Then it’s about the partnership with the local council. Radio 1 pays for the event and provides all the artists, but there are a number of supporting elements, like the traffic management, policing and other associated costs, so we have to have a close working relationship with a very supportive council.” Alongside the usual letters, emails and telephone calls, Carlisle reps were the only ones to make the trip to Bangor last year, which helped to demonstrate their want for the action.

The final factor, a key one for the Live Nation effort, is the site itself. It’s not easy to find somewhere to accommodate an event of this nature, with its demands for space to park broadcast trucks and infrastructure on top of the typical festival model, and only Stobart’s Carlisle Airport stood tall enough. The town and its surrounds seems to have its own microclimate though, perpetually wet and windy, and for Kayam, which supplied the structures for the two biggest stages, the soft ground and vicious squalls during the build and breakdown meant it was the toughest weekend in all its years providing for the event.

“We did the anchor tests, and in the end felt we were better getting on with the smaller structure, and leaving the big one on the ground,” Tom Newton- Chance, the company’s tent master, explains. “We were a day ahead of schedule, so it didn’t impact on the build, but we ended up double staking everything and driving in some screw anchors, which we’d brought as an extra measure. It was a real challenge that gig, soft ground and high winds. In Sunderland it was horribly wet and exposed, but the ground was much firmer. In Carlisle, everything was against us.”

Execution

This was year two for Live Nation producing the Big Weekend, and Wyatt was quick to acknowledge how much the BBC relies on it to deliver the dream.

We want to give our audience the highest quality event, but we don’t want to spend millions and millions of licence payers’ money to do so.

Neil Wyatt, Live Events Editor, Radio 1

“It’s about using Live Nation’s expertise and knowledge about how we can make that happen, and also to put in a stage production that gives our viewers the best possible experience at home,” he explains. “We rely on their buying power to an extent too. The fact that without exception, Live Nation works with the top quality contractors.”

While the company’s head of production and events, Hannah Farnham, stresses how little the approach or the supply team has changed, co-ordinating something like the Big Weekend, in an isolated, wind/rain swept field in the North West is a massive undertaking, and depends on each link in the operation holding fast.

“It’s the event really, for the BBC to get out there and see their customers, and there was no desire from anyone for us to come in and stamp our name on it,” Farnham tells this magazine ahead of the Foo Fighters set. “They’re very involved with the production, because they’re picking it up for broadcast, so it’s a very dynamic relationship between us.”

Capacity

Foo Fighters have sold out Wembley Stadium, so Kayam’s 12,000 capacity concert tent around the Star Events main stage was busy, despite the strategic running order, which saw Swedish House Mafia, no strangers to big crowds themselves, play the In New Music We Trust stage at the same time. It was a similar story on night two, with Lady Gaga versus The Strokes, and with this kind of allure, it can only be a matter of time before the Big Weekend looks to give out more tickets, and stretch its footprint.

“Certainly we’d like to make the event bigger in terms of numbers,” Wyatt agrees. “What we’ve got to balance that with is the expense, and the [infrastructure] available. This year has reminded me why we do it inside, so there would have to be the right structure in order to accommodate more people, or potentially an additional stage. We don’t want to compete with the other festivals out there though.

“In fact, hopefully we help the Vs, the Readings, the Downloads and T in the Parks of this world, and smaller festivals too, by giving the artists such an enormous and powerful promotional window at a time when a lot of those events are selling tickets.”

 

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Contact the editor: olivia.vanstraten@oceanmedia.co.uk