Showsec has secured the festival since it’s inception in 2003, this year supplying over 600 trained and licensed staff. They ensured the safety and enjoyment of 75,000 enthusiastic rock fans through three nights of camping, great weather and music from the World’s leading rock acts, headlined by Faith No More, Slipknot and Def Leppard

Year on year, promoters Live Nation look to make improvements on the event and this year Showsec assisted them with a number of initiatives, most strikingly the movements around a totally new site layout containing 4 stages located in 3 arenas.

Showsec Operations Director Simon Battersbsy was responsible for writing the complex security plans for crowd movement, exit and entry for the new site in advance of the festival. He used a well structured management team combined experience with recently qualified professionals to develop new plans, and then deliver their implementation across the weekend.

Simon commented:

“This has been a fantastic effort at all levels, from the staff booking to the logistics on site of things like radios, catering and uniforms to the delivery of a very robust operation.
“The new site brought new challenges, but was a better site for the crowd and for us to work on.
“Download attracts really keen music fans who like any festival want to move from stage to stage to enjoy the music. Our aim is to facilitate this with ease of movement and minimal stress. The new site engendered itself to this festival: it provided great arenas with wide sightlines and was therefore suited to comfortable crowd management.
“We worked with Mojo Barriers on a new front-of-stage barrier design which worked very well. There was a central finger barrier with partial secondary barrier which combined to prevent lateral motion and surges from the back. 
“The nature of the music and audience profile means the pit teams are particularly crucial to the success of this festival. All fours pit teams were brilliant, if a bit tired after we had a festival record while (band) Kill Switch Engaged were on, with 3,500 crowd surfers coming over the pit barrier during their set!
“The strength of our operation throughout the weekend surpassed previous years in all areas. Our staff and management performed magnificently and I can’t praise them highly enough.”

The weekend presented a few incidents that required ‘on-the-spot’ decision making; the most unexpected probably being the swarm of bees that swarmed, ready to nest in the secondary pit of Stage 2! A well co-ordinated calm, efficient response to cordon the necessary areas and manage the crowd was implemented with minimum disruption to the entertainment.

Showsec’s recently graduated Academy Associates were the first to qualify through the companies innovative training program and applied their knowledge in key operational roles throughout the weekend with Simon Gunn appointed logistical coordinator for the festival. The second intake of academy associates were also on site as part of the course’s vocational training, monitoring the ingress throughout the weekend and feeding back to senior management for further improvements next year.

ENDS

Editor’s Contact:
Graham Brown, Resource PR, E: graham@resource-pr.com