Towersey Village Festival, a 45 year old Oxfordshire folk music institution that has seen new audiences and steady growth with the rising popularity of nu-folk and acoustic music, has its sights set on becoming the UK's greenest festival with a move to dramatically cut power usage and drive up recycling.

The five day event, which now stages some 580 live performances, began life as a village fête and is still overseen by a village committee, and has been produced and promoted by festival veteran Steve Heap since 1975. Lead production contractor Stage Electrics has supplied stage and site lighting, rigging and power for nearly 30 years. Down the years both festival and supplier have mushroomed: Towersey's site has spread from one garden to five fields with seven stages and numerous workshop and trading areas, while Stage Electrics now has offices across the UK. Meanwhile, Towersey's energy footprint has been among the production team's prime focuses.
"We already recycle 70% of all our waste," says Heap, "and the target for 2011 is 80%, which we feel is achievable. Power consumption also has become a major issue, because as the event has grown and we're attracting bigger audiences and signing bigger acts, peoples' expectations of quality have gone up.

"In 2010 we took another step forward, working with Stage Electrics, to extend our use of low voltage lighting across all the sites, including LED and other low power sources for site lighting to the stages themselves." The company provides lighting design and operation, mains distribution, site services, maintenance and callout, with a team head by project manager Jon Rimmer and Liz Reed, health and safety officer and sustainability manager.
"We arrive at a greenfield site," explained Stage Electrics' project manager Jon Rimmer, "dotted with empty marquees. We put in the staging, the lighting, all the truss work and all the power distribution to the entire site, which includes from here power to toilets and showers, and all the catering facilities on site.

"In 2010 we tried to use as much LED as possible. It reduces weight and cable sizes, and ultimately the number of trucks needed; it's a greener way of working all round.

Virtually all the lighting on the two biggest stages is LED - mainly Martin Professional MAC 301 LED moving wash fixtures and LED RGB battens on the truss. We also use LED festoon lamps in key locations rather than normal festoon lamps.

"There is also the benefit that with LED you haven't got the wastage of replacement lamps, which is a costly business, and recycling them correctly is another expense." Liz Reed, the company's Heath and Safety Officer and Sustainability Manager, liaises closely with festival director Steve Heap in the run-up to the festival.
One of the largest venues, the Festival Dance House - or FDH as it is known to Towersey regulars - hosts the evening concerts, ceilidhs and other late night entertainment and holds 1,100 people. The FDH is based on site 2 of the festival, and power is distributed from there to the each area of the festival.

Stage Electrics' managing director David Whitehead designed its lighting rig, with a view to helping the festival develop a more modern feel, a design that was turned into reality by the company's Live Events team. "In the old days," Rimmer continues, "it used to just be fluorescent fittings and a few par cans with halogen floodlights to light the dance floor. Now there's a much more atmospheric look to the lighting."

A short walk along the same country lane that serves the FDH field is the Showground, the festival's hub, which hosts a craft fair, children's centre, the main bar, a music fair which sell musical instruments, and a full range of catering outlets. At showground's far end is the market trading area. Stage Electrics provide them all with mains power through portable generators. Wherever possible LED lighting is deployed, including 500 metres of LED festoon, while campsite walkways are also picked out by white LEDs and one end of the Showground area features colour changing LEDs. As a further contribution to sustainability, the main site lighting employs 150W discharge lanterns rather than the 1000W tungsten floodlights used previously, while LED fixtures are used for the various bars.

The showground also houses the large Ceilidh tent, where workshops and events begin at about 9.30 am and run through to 10.30 at night. One of the festival's most popular attractions, the venue's dancefloor is packed throughout the day. Stage Electrics supply stage systems, trussing, straightforward dancefloor lighting and more festoon to add sparkle and colour.

The third large venue, a short walk from the Ceilidh tent, is the Concert Stage, a seated venue for 1,400 people to watch the headlining folk artists. Again Martin MAC 301s proliferate in the lighting rig, alongside LED battens and standard par cans.

Outside in the market traders' area each trader is provide with low energy lamps. A decision was taken several years ago to bar traders from bringing their - often noisy - generators, and to provide them with a common mains feed supplied by Stage Electrics. "It keeps it both quieter and safer for everybody," affirms Rimmer. "Every trader's supply has its own trip to prevent the trader from plugging in too much equipment, as we can't have a situation, for obvious safety reasons, where the Showground's main generator gets tripped." Five generators in all serve the festival, allowing short distribution runs in each area. It also assists when it comes to the get-out, a two day task for the Stage Electrics crew, as the marquees need to be dismantled and taken direct to their next assignment. The lighting and staging equipment is returned to Stage Electrics' warehouse, where it is sorted and tested, ready for another show the following weekend.