22nd September 2021
Students were over the moon to be given the opportunity to visit the Wireless Festival a few weeks ago.
The students were first given a guided tour by Steve Cheney, who has been a festival stage manager for over 50 years. As well as the tour, Steve gave the students access to the backstage area to see what goes into the organisation of a live festival event.
The students were then lead onto the main stage, where they stood in the VIP area to watch some of the acts and see for themselves how the technology for events is put together. They also got to go into the sound engineers’ tent to see how the sound, lighting, and video are mixed from the control centre to the main stage itself.
The opportunity was a wonderful experience to help the students with their college courses. All of them have modules as part of their courses related to live event production. This was the perfect experience to help them with their assignments and provided them with invaluable industry knowledge not normally given to the general public.
The College’s Technical Trainer, Nathan Slater, who accompanied the students on their trip said: “The students really enjoyed the day asking lots of questions about what they were seeing and how the inner workings of a festival of that size are put together. You could see the realisation dawning on them of the number of jobs that go into putting on an event such as this that they had never considered or even knew existed.”
Creative Media Practice student Mohammad Hussain, 18, from Clayhill: said: “It was a great new experience. It showed me a different side to media and events that I hadn't seen before.” While Esports student Jason Parkinson, 18 from Dagenham said: “It was very insightful. I didn’t realise there would be so much wiring and kit to set up a live event.” Lucy McKinnon, 17, also from Dagenham added: “It was a great experience I would never have had if I wasn't at Barking & Dagenham College.”
