London based drapes specialists Cover It Up supplied nearly a kilometre of free standing black wool serge drapes, rigged on 90 sets of pipe-and-drape system for the Slammin’ Vinyl NYE-NEC event staged at Birmingham’s NEC.
Cover It Up helped transform the main Arena and the Pavilion areas of the venue into one of the biggest and most successful dance party events in the country, celebrating the start of a new decade with 6 action packed arenas and a dynamic line up of DJs and performers.
Cover It Up’s main challenge with this one was to design and rig a sonic baffling system that would separate the sounds between the two principle spaces – the main One Nation arena and Hardcore Heaven – which were set up back to back in the NEC’s Arena.
The client was primarily concerned about the potential bass seepage between the two arenas, but Cover It Up’s Elliot Stennett came up with a cunning plan! “I have worked on several acoustic management projects in the past, so I know the nuances relating to what frequencies can be contained with different types of fabrics at different angles and proximities”
They installed 4 staggered runs of 90 ft wide by 15 deep layers of black wool serge in between the two areas, all on free standing pipes and stands. The One Nation DJ booth was built with a box truss surround, which was then dressed around the outside with 3 layers of heavy serge …… the combination of which did the trick perfectly.
In Hardcore Heaven, Cover It Up also installed 150 metres of 12 metre drop black wool serge to close off all the seating, and in One Nation another 130 metres of the same fabric in 7 metre wide x 5 metre drop sections was utilised to produce the same effect.
They also draped and dressed around the perimeters of the event’s other 4 rooms – all using the same pipe-and-drape system for rigging.
Their crew of 8 completed the entire job very quickly and efficiently on the day before the show which ran from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. rolling over into 2010.
Cover It Up has a long-term ongoing relationship with Slammin’ Vinyl and works on all their large live events. The last one was the 12,000 capacity Westfest, staged at Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet, – the UK’s largest indoor dance event of the year.
For this, Cover It Up dispatched 14 crew and at least 3 kilometres of black drapes including over 200 x 30 ft x 40 ft blacks plus assorted other cloths to dress all 6 arenas and the VIP chill zone They took 6 days and used 7 cherry pickers to completely drape out all the various arenas and marquees, the largest of which was the 60 metre wide by 11 metre high, 5000 capacity Main Stage arena, presented by Andy C and MC GQ.
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