Max SteventonParklife Festival returned to Manchester’s Heaton Park last week with new infrastructure and increased staging capacity to support expanded production requirements.
To meet the demands of festival promoter Live Nation, Parklife’s production partner Engine No 4 worked with Serious Stages to expand The Valley stage area, where acts including 50 Cent and Charli XCX headlined.
Serious Stages supplied a 25 metre, four-post, TZ Roof, flanked by 9.6m wide goal-posts, with a 50m frontage for The Valley stage. While the roof carried the technical PA and lighting equipment, two under-stage areas were used for technical operations and storage, increasing working space for production teams. A three-storey front-of-house tower housed audio and lighting control on the lower levels, with a hospitality suite for sponsor Rockstar Energy Drinks on the top floor.
In addition to the main stage enhancements, Serious Stages installed a 25m x 15m stage platform for Parklife’s new Big Top arena. The tented venue hosted a line-up of DJs and drew capacity crowds across the weekend.
However, the smaller Matinee Stage had to be closed on the final day of the frstival due to health and safety concerns understood to have been caused by unsafe crowd movement. The other stages remained open at the festival, which saw 60,000 attendees per day.
Engine No 4 production manager Tommy Sheals-Barrett said, “We needed to increase capacity in the Valley area for our stand-alone Friday show, which meant some significant changes to the stage position. We also needed to increase rigging capacity, storage space and dock space to deal with the size and scope of the touring productions coming through. The Serious TZ roof gave us exactly what we needed.”