Showforce has been providing crewing support to LarMac Live at Creamfields since 2010 and year on year its involvement in the event has grown. Back in 2015 there were 250 crew shifts requested and up to 40 crew onsite at any one time. This year, Showforce were the only crewing company employed by LarMac Live and it fulfilled 830 crew shifts and supplied over 100 crew for the de-rig providing stage hands, backline crew, plant operators, crew chiefs and a site boss. Showforce were also responsible for the load-in of all equipment for every stage around the site, supporting the rest of the contractors: Coloursound, Adlib, PRG XL video, dbnAudile and Britannia Row Productions, assisting with the smaller load-ins for music bank and the risers, provided by Acorn.
Chris Martelly, Showforce Operations Director, said: “As you would expect on a project of this size crew numbers change regularly to meet the demands of the project and with us providing all the crew this year that was quite a challenge in itself. However, we were well prepared and ensured that we had plenty of crew trained and accredited ahead of time. This ensured that any last minute requirements could be dealt with promptly and that the right crew with the right skills sets were available when needed. Our dedicated account handler and operations manager were on-hand throughout with responsibility for all logistics, scheduling, accreditation and client liaison.
“For us, the highlight of this year’s Creamfields was being LarMac Live’s sole crewing provider. To go from being one of three suppliers in 2014 and 2015, to two in 2016 and then just us for 2017 is a huge endorsement of our service levels and ability to deliver. We were thrilled to play such a large role,” he added.
Martelly concluded: “We utilised resources from our regional offices in London and Liverpool ensuring that we had experienced local crew available for the project to meet the large numbers required. We believe that our operations department is one of the best in the festival and outdoor event industry. We have a dedicated team of schedulers and bookers, account handlers, recruiters and crew managers work tirelessly to ensure that they have the very best local crew on-site and that they are deployed efficiently and Creamfields 2017 was a great example of that.”