Christopher BarrettSince it was founded in 2006 by Sarah Hemsley-Cole, SC Productions has worked on a remarkable range of projects from Welsh-language arts festival Urdd Eisteddfod to Taylor Swift stadium shows. Christopher Barrett hears from the company’s directors as they celebrate 20 years in business.
Among the UK’s most experienced events professionals, Sarah Hemsley-Cole has built Cardiff-based SC Productions from the ground up.
Primarily a production and site management company, SC Productions has worked on countless major events in Wales, including all Stereophonics’ outdoor shows in the past decade and numerous events at Cardiff Castle and the Principality Stadium. In fact, no company has delivered events in more spaces in Cardiff than SC Productions (SCP).
The company’s reach has never been limited to Wales though, with countless previous projects across the UK including shows in historic sites such as Warwick Castle and Leeds Castle in Kent, and festivals ranging from Bloodstock in Derbyshire to Creamfields in Cheshire. It has also worked on stadium events across the UK for acts including Sam Fender and Ed Sheeran, non-music events such as the Bristol Light Festival, and has a long-standing relationship with Knebworth Park having worked with Kilimanjaro Live founder Stuart Galbraith on Sonisphere Festival and Red Hot Chilli Peppers at the Hertfordshire venue. SCP and Kili will be back in the park this summer working together on Iron Maiden’s 50th anniversary celebration concert.
Kilimanjaro Live’s founder and the CEO of KMJ Entertainment Group, Galbraith played a key role in encouraging Hemsley-Cole to go it alone and launch SCP. She had first worked with Galbraith in her role as production manager for Cardiff County Council’s events team.
“We had the 1998 European Summit, and Stuart was doing a Stereophonics show in Cardiff Castle,” she says. “I helped Stuart and his team hide a whole load of infrastructure, because we needed to turn the castle around overnight for the Queen to arrive the next day. That’s how I met Stuart. In those days running events in the castle was still quite new, and Stuart wanted someone that knew the venue and the city well.”
Says Galbraith, “From the outset, her efficiency and ability in tackling problems and providing solutions was hugely impressive, and we’ve worked with her ever since on anything from Sonisphere and Wakestock to multiple stadium shows.”
“They thought I was pretty much an alien. It was a really lovely three years there.”
With an established knowledge of theatre production, Hemsley-Cole’s first experience of working on festivals precedes her time at Cardiff Council. Having graduated from the Welsh College of Music and Drama, she left the big city for the Blackwood Miners Institute in Caerphilly where she worked as a technical production manager.
“Back in the ‘90s, as part of the regeneration programme after the mines had been closed, a lot of the miners’ welfare halls were taken over by the Arts Council and funded as theatres. So, I ended up there with my skinhead and my Dr Martin’s in this very typical Welsh mining community. They thought I was pretty much an alien. It was a really lovely three years there. I had an absolute ball. We were asked to twin with a town in the Czech Republic, and I helped organise my first festival.”
It’s been a long and impressive journey since she graduated, but Hemsley-Cole remains closely connected with the Welsh College of Music and Drama to this day, where she helps play a key role in helping to develop fledgling talent. In between managing SCP’s work on events in venues of all shapes and sizes, from green fields to city centres, Hemsley-Cole somehow finds time to teach at the college and was awarded an Honorary Fellowship in recognition of her ongoing support of it.
There have been many other accolades along the way, including her becoming only the second woman ever to win the Association of British Theatre’s Technical Award.
Wonder woman
During her 30-year career, Hemsley-Cole has passionately championed the visibility of women in the live events sector, and in 2013 set up NOWIE (Network of Women in Events) with Zac Fox, who is now the CEO at Kilimanjaro Live.
“When we first set NOWIE up, we felt it was critical that there was much more exposure for the women in the sector,” she says. “Zac and I felt strongly that they just weren’t being asked to be involved in things. When I first started, I didn’t really think about me being one of very few women working in similar roles; it was people telling me that was the case that really brought it home.”
“I was very impressed by Sarah very quickly and made a point of making friends.”
Fox says she can vividly remember the first time she met Hemsley-Cole, which was at that Stereophonics show at Cardiff Castle back in 1998: “I went in and asked her where the site manager was, and she had to tell me it was her. I was blown away; I didn’t know that women were allowed to do any jobs outside of the box office and catering at that point. I was very impressed by Sarah very quickly and made a point of making friends.”
“I’m super proud of all of the women I’ve mentored throughout my career,” says Hemsley-Cole. “I do think the sector has improved, with women now being recognised. It’s a pretty young sector and it is not entrenched in archaic maleness by any means.”
“When I first started working for Sarah, I answered the office phone and someone said, ‘Have I got the right number? There’s a man answering the phone at SC Productions’.” recalls Jake Warriner, who a decade later has risen to company director and project manager.
“Jake and I are both LGBTQ,” says Hemsley-Cole. “It’s always been part of our identity. There’s lots of diversity in this industry and that’s something worth celebrating.”
A massive impact
For Warriner, life at SCP began in 2016, and since then he has seen both the number of its workforce and the events it works on each year double. Among the other key members of the SCP team are project manager Lisa Hall and production co-ordinator Chloe Bezant.
Jake Warriner and Sarah Hemsley-Cole
Among the many roles Warriner has taken on during the past decade at SCP include being artist liaison manager for Creamfields, Camp Bestival and Field Day, taking over as site management of Bloodstock in 2021, and overseeing site management for stadium shows by acts including Sam Fender and Taylor Swift.
He says a particularly memorable project was a show by Massive Attack, in a 15,000-capacity temporary arena built by Acorn Event Structures, in Bristol to mark the 21st anniversary of their album Mezzanine. The event, in March 2019, took place at Filton Airfield, yards from the Brabazon Hangars where the YTL Arena is now being completed. SCP worked with Communion One as the sole promoter.”
The event was promoted by the now Communion One directors Daniel Ealam and Scott O’Neill, who have worked with SC Productions since collaborating on an Ed Sheeran show at Wembley Stadium back in 2015. Since then, the promoters have worked with SCP on 35 stadium shows with Ed Sheeran, and countless others show with acts in less traditional entertainment venues.
“Sarah and her team are the sort of people who genuinely get excited about doing something new and different. From the outset they helped us turn crazy ideas into reality,” says Ealam.
“Jake was integral to making the Massive Attack show work,” says O’Neill. “We originally had the idea of doing the show in the hangar that is now becoming the YTL Arena. At that point, it didn’t have any sort of planning permission for live music and it quickly became clear that we were not going to be able to do the concert in there. Jake said, ‘Hang on a minute, if we cross this line here, we’re in South Gloucestershire rather than Bristol. Why don’t we do it over there on the runway?’. Just by moving the event 100 metres along on the same site, and building a temporary hanger, meant we could get permission to do it. The event wouldn’t have happened without Sarah and Jake on board.”
Among the many shows they have collaborate on since then was The Reytons headlining the biggest outdoor show ever staged in Rotherham.
“Having The Reytons in Rotherham for a homecoming show was a really special moment for the band,” says Hemsley-Cole. “Rotherham had last had a major outdoor concert in 1974. It meant looking at this slightly tired park in the middle of the town, where the band used to play as children, and thinking about how to put on a show there for 20,000 people. It was really special to them, and for me that kind of project is way more of a challenge than doing local site management in a stadium.”
When it comes to longstanding clients, SCP’s working relationship with Creamfields and Bloodstock are nearly as old as the company; 19 years.
“Bloodstock has grown from around 7,000 to a licenced capacity of 20,000 and sold out for the past two years. We have really supported the Gregory family on that journey and it’s been really lovely. We always see working with our clients very much as a collaborative experience,” says Hemsley-Cole.
At Creamfields, SCP advances all artists booked, oversees hotel logistics, accreditation logistics, hosting artists on site, while also dealing with ground transport, onsite drivers and arena staffing.
“There’s lots of diversity in this industry and that’s something worth celebrating.”
“Sarah’s knowledge, professionalism, expertise and calm approach, alongside the hard work and dedication of the wider team, are a huge part of why they are so trusted and valued by everyone they work with,” says Cream Global’s Gill Nightingale.
To streamline the advancing process across all its projects, SC Productions has built an advancing portal.
“When Sarah started they used to advance over fax, whereas now you’ll receive hundreds of emails from the same tour manager about the minutest of details,” says Warriner, “So in some ways we’ve all gone bit backwards because it seemed much simpler then, but our advance system is all online, it’s automated, and we white label it so companies can use their own branding. We’ve taken a lot of time to create a system that streamlines the processes and every single year we work to streamline it that bit more.”
Another key repeat project for SCP is The Urdd National Eisteddfod. One of Europe’s largest youth touring festivals, it attracts around 90,000 visitors per year. SCP has worked on it for the past 14 years.
“That’s been another great relationship,” says Hemsley-Cole. “It’s been a constant and is something we are proud of. It really anchors us in the Welsh cultural scene.
“The event is moved to a new site every year. This year we’re on Anglesey Showground and next year we are in Newport. That’s part the joy of it; the challenge of trying to provide the customer with the same kind of experience even though they’re somewhere, geographically, completely different.”
Looking ahead, SCP’s founder says she is confident that she has the right team on board to carry the company forward for the next 20 years: “Jake and I operate at a very similar level, and with Lisa supporting us as well, it gives us the scope to be confident that we can go into a super saturated year and get it right.
“Jake is very much the company’s future beyond the day I hang up my hi-vis, but that isn’t happening yet. I’ve still got quite a lot of life in me yet.”
This article features in the summer edition of Access All Areas magazine – read it here.