Outdoor Stages Gears Up for 2021 Summer Season

With COVID restrictions now relaxed almost completely, we have been busy gearing up for what is set to be our busiest ever summer. After the enforced low volume of events this year, we couldn’t be happier to “get back in the saddle” as it were and deliver our outdoor stage hire services to dozens of events taking place up and down the country.

But before we take you through some of the highlights of the next few months, it’s worth reminding you of our stage hire services, which include all elements of event production should you need them!

Stage Hire Services from Outdoor Stages

If you’ve read the blog at all in recent months, you’ll know that we’ve added a few new stages to our ever-increasing roster. With so much going on recently, if you’re in the process of organising an indoor or outdoor event, you may have forgotten what we can offer.

So without further ado, let’s quickly run you through our stages before moving on to the all-encompassing event production services we can now offer to our clients.

Hire a Versatile 6m x 4m Arc Roof Stage for Your Event

We’re going to work our way through the stages in size order, starting with the smallest, our 6m x 4m arc roof stage.

This is an incredibly versatile stage that’s just as at home for indoor events as it is for outdoor events. What’s brilliant about this stage is that it takes no time at all to construct (by stage building standards). We can arrive, offload the kit off the vans, and have the entire structure erected in 90 minutes to two hours (depending on factors such as weather and access).

So whether you are hosting an indoor event (such as a conference or musical performance) for the first time in over a year, this is a great mobile stage hire option if you’re on a tight schedule with your venue.

Likewise, whether you're organising a charity fun run event or you’ve booked a local band for a community event, these small stages still pack a punch (especially when accompanied by our sound and lighting hire packages) and more than suffice for all kinds of occasions.

With the smallest stage of our roster covered, it’s time to introduce you to the newest member of our stage hire lineup!

Hire a Slightly Bigger Stage for Your Event with Our 7m x 5m Covered Option

When bookings for this year started to come in, we soon realised that there was a slight gap in our inventory. Many clients were asking for a stage that boasted the convenience of our 6m x 4m but delivered a bigger payload and stage area.

With our 8m x 6m arc roof stage (more on this stage in a moment) seemingly too large to fit the bill, we went out and purchased another stage that was a perfect fit for our client requests. Enter our brand new 7m x 5m outdoor stage!

As with most of our stages, it benefits from the industry-leading arc roof design and Eurospect 9 compliance should you need to present documentation to your local authority. This stage will easily serve up to 500 people and works as a smaller stage at national festivals or as the main attraction for smaller, regional events.

Given that we specifically purchased this after several requests for this stage, you can understand that it’s mostly booked up for the summer ALREADY! However, please do contact us as we have a few spare dates that might line up with your proposed dates.

With our smaller stage hire options covered, let’s start moving up in size to our medium and large festival stages.

Level Up Your Event with Our 8m x 6m Arc Roof Stage

Another excellent “in-between” option for our clients is our 8m x 6m arc roof stage. It delivers the “main stage” feeling for events without costing the same as some of our enormous festival stage hire options.

Not just being an excellent fit for so many events, it’s perhaps the most flexible stage hire option we have in terms of configuration. You see, this particular stage boasts a range of stage heights, including 1.5ft, 1m, or 3m, allowing you to tweak it to your individual preferences.

While stage hire in England can never be boiled down to a one-size-fits-all approach, the sheer number of options you have with this stage makes it one of our most popular choices. It doesn’t matter whether you are hosting an outdoor cinema event or a local rock concert. This stage can pretty much do it all!

Next up, it’s time to move onto our big-hitting, show-stopping festival stages!

Go Big with Our 11m x 9m Arc Roof Outdoor Festival Stage

Sometimes you just have to go big or go home. If you need a “main stage” for your event, then you might just be looking at it with our 11m x 9m arc roof stage.

With an industry-beating roof payload of 3500kg, this stage is capable of providing a home to even the most extravagant and advanced stage productions you can conceive. You could easily use this stage to support a performance for up to 10,000 people (and beyond!), plenty for both regional and national outdoor events.

Concerning the remaining specifications, it provides your performers with a workable stage area of 10m x 8m and the stage deck height is 1.4m, unheard of for this style of arc roof system. And while this stage is undoubtedly designed with the outdoors in mind, there’s no rule to say that you can’t hire it as a stage for your indoor music concert taking place in London, for example.

Lastly, we are the only UK-based staging company to offer this specific outdoor stage. So if you want to invest in this specific concert stage hire option, you’re going to have to come to us, the exclusive owners!

Create Your Own Slice of Glastonbury with Our Orbit Stage

As incredible as our largest arc roof stage is, sometimes you just need something different that turns heads and attracts attraction. Well, great news! Our 12m x 10m arc dome roof stage benefits from an orbit-style stage design, which looks every inch like its Glastonbury namesake.

The design, which just screams outdoor festival stage, is a veritable crowd-pleaser capable of housing some of the most dramatic stage productions money can buy!

When comparing it to our other big-hitting festival stage, it’s important to note that the difference in design provides an even bigger payload. It also has a more prominent overhang, which gives your performers much better protection from the famously unpredictable elements.

Phew! That’s the stages covered. But don’t go anyway just yet. We are only just getting started regarding the services we can provide to your event. Our equipment hire services go far beyond stage services. In case you didn’t know that essential piece of information, let’s quickly fill you in on our entire range of event production services.

Hire All Aspects of Event Production from Outdoor Stages

Of course, most outdoor events such as music concerts, festivals, and outdoor cinemas need a stage. Rarely is the stage alone enough. Impressive structures as they are, you’ll need all kinds of production equipment to bring these installations to life.

That’s why we’ve invested heavily in additional equipment for our stages so that you can source everything you need for your occasion from one outfit. So what exactly do we supply to events right across the UK?

Stage Lighting Hire

Usually first on the list is stage lighting. Stages need to be rigged with several different lighting fixtures to function at their best. From spotlights to strobes, we stock every type of light you could conceivably need.

We can even supply lighting technicians to oversee the installation and artistic direction should you need them to. We’ve developed quite the reputation when it comes to light shows!

Professional Sound Hire from Outdoor Stages

While lighting is crucial for your stage production, it won’t mean much without the professional sound equipment that delivers immersive audio for your performers and your event attendees.

Once again, no other stage company can match our breadth and depth of top-quality sound equipment. We only stock the best in business when it comes to line arrays, stage monitors, amps, microphones, subwoofers, and other sound equipment. Our inventory only contains brand-leading names such as d&b audiotechnik and Shure, which may well be explicitly requested on artists’ riders.

Elevate Your Stage Hire with Production Extras

With an incredible array of lighting and sound fixtures, you’ll be 90% of the way there when it comes to creating the perfect stage production for your event. But many of you will require production extras to complete your desired finish.

For example, PA wings are always a firm favourite. Not only are they functional for hanging event branding or line arrays, but they make your stage even more imposing and attention-grabbing. By adding 3m PA wings on either side of our 11m x 9m festival stage, you’ve got close to 20m of stage front.

Don’t forget other production extras that pack a punch, such as LED screens. Not only are they excellent for broadcasting high-quality footage of your performers, but they can play crucial roles in the performances too!

We could spend all day on the number of supplementary services we offer, but we think you’ve got the picture – you can get everything you need from us, including but not limited to:

  • Stage lighting
  • Professional sound equipment
  • PA systems
  • LED screens
  • PA wings
  • Event equipment storage shelters
  • Backstage areas
  • Side-of-stage areas
  • Power generators
  • Stage drapes
  • Truss structures and rigging
  • And much, much more!

With those items taken care of, let’s switch our attention to the events season this year, how it's shaping up to be one of the busiest summer’s yet, and where we are heading over the course of the next few months.

Events Industry to Go Full Steam Ahead in 2021 as COVID Restrictions Lift

If you remember back to our recap of the year 2020 post, you’ll remember that we were telling you about the pent up demand for 2021 after a year of mostly cancelled or postponed events. Well, interest and bookings have only increased since that point, specifically after the government announced the UK’s roadmap out of lockdown back in March 2021.

As things stand, social restrictions will be lifted in their entirety on June 21st. What that means for the events industry is that it will be all systems go. However, things will inevitably be different. Vaccines are not bulletproof solutions, so there will be rapid COVID testing and other similar precautions in place to ensure that occasions such as festivals don’t become “superspreader events.”

Even though COVID remains a part of our lives, the events industry is confident that it can deliver safe events regardless of the current state of affairs via the precautions mentioned above. Confidence is high with consumers too. Incredibly, in response to the government’s announcement regarding the end of lockdown, festival company Live Nation (the team behind Reading & Leeds Festival) announced their events were going ahead and sold 180,000 tickets in 72 hours!

It’s a trend we see right across the board. It’s not merely music festivals. Car shows, outdoor cinema events, expos, trade shows, you name it – all those events that would have gone ahead last year were it not for COVID are raring to go this year. Factor in the numerous events that are springing up to cater for the pent up demand to celebrate getting our lives back, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a busy summer.

At least that’s the case for us. We’ve already secured bookings for numerous weekends throughout the summer and early autumn. And truth be told, we CAN’T WAIT to get back out there. We know that there will be something very special about seeing a performer up on that stage in front of thousands of adoring fans. It might even bring a tear to the eye!

With that in mind, we thought it might be helpful to tell you about a few of our engagements coming up in the next few weeks and months to give you a better idea of the types of events we serve. You’ll be pleased to learn that they are quite an eclectic mix!

So without further ado, let’s start with what is scheduled to be our first major undertaking post-lockdown.

Outdoor Stages Provides Full Event Production to Modified Nationals

In case you're unfamiliar, Modified Nationals is one of the biggest car shows in the UK. It takes place in conjunction with the East of England AutoFest (previously Peterborough car show) and the National Hot Rod and Custom American Car Show. Both individuals and car clubs from across the nation come together to celebrate their tuned and customised motors, with all kinds of attractions put on throughout the weekend. If you like cars, then this is undoubtedly the place to be this July!

There’s everything from fairground rides to stunt driving performances, and we’re thrilled to be providing our full suite of services to this event, which takes place on the Peterborough Showground.

If you remember, in our previous blog post, we told you all about opening a second stage hire location in Peterborough due to winning an ever-increasing amount of work from locations such as the showground. Well, this will be the first time we will only have to transport our gear the short distance from our new warehouse to the East of England Arena to get everything set up, kicking off a busy year of events served from this location.

But back to Modified Nationals, we will be providing all manner of staging for the live performances (which include fire breathing acts!), and we will also provide a full suite of car ramps and staging (we told you we do it all!). Those stages will be situated both inside and outside plus we will be working alongside On Tour Events which is a technical event production company based in London, On Tour Events will be installing a outdoor car display staging platform & a custom clear stage platform inside for dancers.

But our hire services won’t end there. We will also provide all of the associated DJ booths, lighting, sound, equipment, LED screens, and PA wings for each stage. Basically, everything required for the event on the technical side will be taken care of by our team. It’s a HUGE event, and we can’t think of a better way to kick off a new chapter in our history as a company.

But enough about cars, let’s tell you about some of our slightly more traditional festival bookings.

Full Stage Hire and Event Production Services for the Yorkshire Dales Food & Drink Festival

If there was ever a festival that does what it says on the tin, this is it! It’s a celebration of all things food and drink that takes place in, you guessed it, the Yorkshire Dales!

Aside from the headline chef demos from the likes of The Hairy Bikers and James Martin and loads of stalls offering up delicious food and drink, there are plenty of non-culinary activities going on. They include a long list of musical performances, which is where we come in.

The festival books a mix of the best tribute acts around, including Kylie, Take That, and Ed Sheeran enthusiasts, as well as the best Yorkshire has to offer concerning up-and-coming, unsigned talent.

In terms of our brief, not only will we supply the main music stage, but we will also be in charge of providing and overseeing ALL production aspects. In other words, we’ll be rigging all of the stage lighting fixtures, hooking up, testing, and mixing all of the sound, and supplying all of the associated production extras such as two giant LED screens and the truss structures from which we’ll suspend them.

As you can imagine, this is another big undertaking given the thousands of people that will be attending one of the most significant events in Yorkshire post-lockdown. However, we are more than up to the challenge, and we can’t wait to get back up to Funkirk Farm!

But let’s hop from one food-inspired festival to another a little closer to home.

Jam on Rye Returns After Two-Year Hiatus with The Help Of Outdoor Stages

Another festival making a return is the Jam on Rye Festival. Brought together by KERB, London’s leading street food incubator, this festival blends the best street food stalls London has to offer with an eclectic mix of musical performances spread across three stages. As with the food, the music has an international flavour, with DJs and artists covering genres such as jazz, reggae, urban, and even world music.

The festival organisers reached out to us to help them with three outdoor stages for this year’s event, which will mark a change from its traditional bank holiday slot on Peckham Rye. We will be providing a range of stage sizes using their preferred arc roof design, and we will have the challenge of constructing three stages on the same site within 72 hours.

Luckily, we love a challenge, and we can’t wait to set up for one of London’s most prominent festivals this summer!

Contact Outdoor Stages Today to Discuss Your Stage Hire and Event Production Requirements

Wow, what a summer we have lined up! And we’ve only had time to mention a few of the highlights! However, we still have availability for your event if you need to secure a reliable stage hire company that can work anywhere in the UK.

With the social restrictions on our lives about to be permanently lifted, events right across the nation are being given the green light, sparking a scramble for outdoor stage hire in particular. But don’t worry if you haven’t taken the gamble to book early with us – we do still have room for events this summer and beyond.

However, that availability is fast filling up given the increasing certainty of events going ahead, so please don’t delay picking up the phone or shooting us an email. Even if it’s just to discuss hypotheticals, we can at least pencil you in for dates before it’s too late!

We look forward to helping you to create an unforgettable stage production for your event shortly!