Tom HallLUCID, a Kent and London based design and fabrication company, has talked exclusively to Access about its work at both Field Day and Parklife festivals.
Field Day activation with BULLDOG Gin
LUCID worked closely with Outer Insight agency to realise and build an immersive BULLDOG Gin brand activation for festival revellers at this year’s Field Day Festival.
The immersive branded arena, built using sea containers, housed a bar, an interactive immersive experience, a DJ platform, VIP viewing platform and seating area. The likes of Denis Sulta, DJ Haii and many more brought dance music to the arena which was packed by close on Saturday evening. BULLDOG Gin will be re-using the structure at future events.
Helen Swan and Chris Carr, co-directors of LUCID, and their team are a design and fabrication studio with a large fully equipped workshop on a leafy farm in Kent.
“Global / Field Day asked us to come up with a design for their fourth stage, in collaboration with BULLDOG Gin. It needed to compliment and incorporate Bulldog’s strong brand identity without feeling like a brand activation that had been crowbarred onto site,” explains Swan.
LUCID worked collaboratively with both Global and Field Day to develop the BULLDOG Gin Yard, an arena created by layered black shipping containers highlighted with the minimalist BULLDOG logo.
She adds: “Field Day’s audiences are super-media savvy and it was imperative that the design we created had authenticity as an arena and stage in its own right and didn’t feel like a brand activation. By working with the minimalism of the BULLDOG logo combined with black shipping containers which echoed the industrial nature of the Field Day site, we created a space that had it own identity beyond the brand without losing the brand awareness.”
LUCID at Parklife
LUCID returned for a second year to design and build the new The Valley at Parklife Festival 2019. Four times the size of the previous year, the company used innovative engineering and design techniques to build the dystopian cityscape structure by building in a modular way so that the stages could be built quickly on site and can be reused year after year. This year’s line up on The Valley, hosted by Disclosure, included the likes of Nas, Mark Ronson, Kaytranada, Annie Mac, Denis Sulta, DJ Koze, Honey Dijon and Sally C.
Swan said: “All three of the structures comprising The Valley had to be constructed onsite at the Parklife festival grounds within 10 days. This included leaving enough time for Disclosure to run through their programming with LUCID’s lighting design team. To ensure this was possible, LUCID developed a modular frame and bracket system that allowed them to get set up at height, with speed, and without crane lifts where none were available.”
Helen Swan, Chris Carr and the team have also spent several months designing and building stages for the world-renowned Glastonbury Festival and the immersive Boomtown Festival.
Read more on Lucid’s work in the Summer edition of Access All Areas, out circa 15 July.