Three Mills Green Events

Background

After a successful weekend of shows in 2018, Columbo Star Group wanted to develop and expand their programme of festivals at Three Mills Green for 2019. The series would host Art’s House festival and Anjunadeep Open Air for a second year and introduce three new shows for the August Bank Holiday; One Day at the Disco, Maiden Voyage and 80s in the Park.

The Fair were asked to provide a full service for the run of events including production, health and safety, procurement and management.

Challenge

Having worked with the site for two years, The Fair had developed a good relationship with the landowners, Council and local stakeholders, as well as gaining a strong knowledge of the event site.

Columbo Star Group’s vision for 2019 was to expand and diversify their programme of events. The Fair applied for a non-time-limited licence on behalf of the promoter and, despite receiving some strong representations, was successful.

Additional challenges included:

The festivals were programmed on the 2^nd and 4^th weekends of the month. This meant there was a 9 day period where no work was taking place. The site was partially de-rigged in preparation for the break period so that part of the green could be accessed by local residents. This section of the festival then had to be re-built again for the next weekend of shows.
Though small in size, the event site is complex to work with. With two weekends of shows, additional equipment needed to fit into the site (including 4 artic trucks!) whilst maintaining the event capacity.
Maintaining access to homes and businesses situated along the main ingress/egress route to the site.
During the build for Art’s House and Anjunadeep, a storm had arrived in the UK. Strong winds hit hardest on Saturday when the festival was due to take place. The Fair had to take additional health and safety precautions to ensure the festival was safe to go ahead:
– Extra pins were put in the marquee during the show
– We took down non-essential signage and hessian scrim
– Extra ratchet straps and scaff putlogs were used to secure the fencing
– All crew, staff and security were briefed to look for potential hazards
– Consistent anemometer readings from the stage and around the site
– Full event site wind management plan relating to each structure

Delivery

Build, Live and Break Production Management
Live Event and Health & Safety Management
Live Event and HProcurement of high-quality suppliersealth & Safety Management
Supplier Auditing
CAD site design: amendments were made to the site to include additional operational equipment for 2 weekends, we expanded the VIP area and included new activations in the woodland area
Stakeholder Engagement and Management
Inclusion of a family-friendly festival show which offered 2,000 free tickets to local residents
Licensing: successfully obtained a non-time-limited licence for the site
SAG attendance
ESMP: Production of all documents, including Traffic Management Plan

Results

Successful delivery of 5 festival shows: Art’s House festival, Anjunadeep Open Air, One Day at the Disco, Maiden Voyage and 80s in the Park.
Over 26,000 attendees over the two weekends
Addition of new woodland bar area for 2019 as well as ‘The Hub’ tent which was used for talks and activities at Maiden Voyage.

“For 2019 we wanted to increase the number of shows at Three Mills and The Fair’s knowledge and experience of the site and stakeholders was really valuable in helping us achieve this. They succeeded in gaining a non-time limited licence for us with an increased number of show dates so hopefully we can expand and improve year on year. The site at Three Mills is a small and unique space but the team made it workable with the capacity and helped us activate more of the woodland area.”