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UK - disguise has launched a new internship programme designed to “seek out, train and invite the very best talent from other under-represented backgrounds into the technology industry”.
disguise has forged partnerships with two initiatives - Kwanda, a non-profit organisation supporting enterprise and creativity within the black community, and Workfinder, which matches students with opportunities in start-ups and scaleups.
“It was important for disguise to collaborate with Kwanda to address racial diversity within the tech industry,” says the company. “By partnering with Workfinder, disguise is directly supporting their Women in Tech scheme that aims to deliver increased gender equality in the STEM sector.
“The new internship programme simultaneously gi

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UK - PLASA, the association for the live entertainment technology industry, and the ABTT (Association of British Theatre Technicians) are pleased to announce a collaboration that will bring the 2021 editions of both the PLASA Show and the ABTT Theatre Show under one roof from 5-7 September at Olympia London.
For 2021 only, this partnership between the two established associations aims to reduce pressure on the exhibition calendar as the industry’s eco-system recovers from the impacts of the pandemic and will bring the broad sector together for one landmark event.
As previously planned for 2020, PLASA Show 2021 - for this year with the ABTT Theatre Show - will debut at Olympia’s largest hall, the Grand. The ABTT Theatre Show will run in its own defined space, retaining its unique identity, and celebrating the ABTT’s 60th anniversary. The spacious Grand hall will

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UK - The board of governors of The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama has announced the appointment of Josette Bushell-Mingo OBE as the incoming principal of the school.
Currently the head of acting at Stockholm University of the Arts, Sweden, Bushell-Mingo is an award-winning actor and director whose 40-year career has included performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Manchester Royal Exchange. She was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Rafiki in the West End production of The Lion King, a role which she originated, and she devised and starred in the internationally acclaimed production Nina: A Story about Nina Simone and Me.
As a director, Bushell-Mingo was founder and artistic director of PUSH, a Black-led theatre festival with the Young Vic Theatre. Through her work
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Indochine X PixMob Fan Immersion

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's - 40 thousand LED pixels on a ceiling!!! Indochine's whirlwind tour transports fans to another level of the live experience - immersing them from floor to ceiling with PixMob's X4 wristbands, and an LED ceiling made entirely of its NOVA Minis! With the vision of Indochine's creative team, PixMob used its LED fan-technology to turn attendees and venues into an ocean of effects, and a starry sky of LED magic. Très très cool!

Read more about the Indochine tour in the latest issue of LSi

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UK - Harman Professional Solutions has announced that Martin Professional has appointed Michael Straun and Nick Hansen as EMEA lighting designer relationship managers for Martin Professional.
Created specifically to facilitate close working relationships with end-users throughout the region, the EMEA lighting designer relationship manager role involves collaborating with lighting designers, Martin distributors and the rental market in all sectors, including television, theatre, touring and more. In addition to bringing real-world experience, first-hand product knowledge and industry connections to the position, Michael and Nick will also provide insight for research and development at Martin.
“We are excited to welcome Michael Straun and Nick Hansen onto the Martin team, especially in the current business climate,” said Ben Payne, head of lighting, Martin EMEA.

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Saudi Arabia - FAZ Medical Centre in the city of Abha, south-west Saudi Arabia, is the latest in a chain of Saudi Arabian polyclinics, equipped to treat a wide range of conditions. The new seven-storey facility is equipped with all the latest medical technology, complemented by a Yamaha audio system.
Located between 2200 and 3000m above sea level, Abha is promoted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a tourist destination, its semi-arid climate appealing to overseas visitors, as well as to Saudi citizens who live in the fiercer desert heat of the rest of the country.
Jeddah-based aDawliah Universal Electronics was asked to design and supply a system which would cover 16 areas of the building with high quality public address and paging audio, using both wireless and wired control for volume and independent routing of audio sources to different areas. The system also had t

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USA - When Northside Baptist Church in Huntsville, Texas, needed to source a sound system for its newly constructed worship space, the church’s technical team found itself confronted with familiar challenges. Like so many houses of worship, the church leadership needed to ensure the best possible sound coverage within their new sanctuary’s acoustic environment while balancing its love for music in worship with clarity of speech.
Crucially, all this needed to be achieved without taking too much from the donation plate. Now the church has found a solution in the TW Audio ELLA.
Marking the first ELLA installation in the United States, the system has been greeted by Bob Slie, youth pastor at Northside Baptist Church, as having transformed the church’s worship experience.
Slie first experienced ELLA as part of an early demonstration of the technology at the WFX

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USA - Lectrosonics, together with a number of dealers, industry manufacturers and end-users, has been spearheading a social media campaign to emphasise that no matter the medium, sound is critical.
The company has now announced the winners of the Sound is Essential creativity contest - Michael Wynn; Sound Speeds/Allen Lee Williams; Curtiss Judd and Siddharth Sadashiv.
Michael Wynn of Michael Wynn Sound has been named the first place winner, for his video reflecting on the variety of events which have taken place during 2020 and how sound truly played an essential part of each of them. See the video here: https://youtu.be/Fzed1XVpSNM.
Sound Speeds/Allen Lee Williams took second place by showing how just essential sound is with

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Slovenia - The marriage between lighting and set design is never far from Crt Birsa’s mind. Only when light absorbs itself completely in its surroundings, can it exert its full power to transform. This is always true, he believes, but especially so when lighting television productions, where the limited and less forgiving eye of the camera replaces live human vision.
“In TV shows lighting has to walk hand in hand with set design,” he said. “There must be tight collaboration between the lighting and set designers for the total design to reach the level of perfection that the camera demands.”
Birsa and his frequent collaborator set designer Greta Godnic achieved this level, and then some, for a NYE special run by Slovenian National Television (RTV) in its famed Studio 1. Powering his five universe show with a ChamSys MagicQ MQ80, he wove light from 101 fixtures

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USA - Liberty University has invested in a complement of 20 Ayrton Khamsin-S LED profile luminaires for the new Liberty Arena on the Lynchburg, Virginia campus.
Liberty Arena seats 4,500 spectators and is the home of the university’s men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball teams whose games are broadcast on ESPN+. Liberty University previously purchased Ayrton Mistral fixtures for a multi-use event space, which hosts a wide array of entertainment programs and gatherings.
“We wanted bright LED fixtures that would really pop and enhance the fan experience in our new dedicated sports arena,” says Amy Caun, lighting director and Tier 2 production technician in Liberty’s Event Production department.
Designed for scenic applications, the Khamsin-S is equipped with a new LED module delivering powerful metallic white light with a record-breaking output of

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Sweden - Panasonic projectors helped celebrate man’s understanding of Space with over 100,000 visitors seeing the spectacular projection mapping onto Stockholm’s City Hall (Stadshuset) as part of the Nobel Week Lights festival.
The installation is one of the largest video mapping projects ever seen in the city. The event celebrated the 2020 Nobel Prize in Stockholm with lighting installations created around the city inspired by Nobel laureate discoveries.
The creative result was SPACE, designed by Andreas Skärberg and produced by PXLFLD studios. The content is a 16-minute projection mapped, animated art installation celebrating amazing advances in space physics.
PXLFLD called on its partners Lumination of Sweden and Creative Technology, which specialises in advanced technical solutions for the live events and broadcast industry, to help make the vision beco

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Europe - Netherlands-based architectural lighting control specialist Visual Productions has announced Matrix Sales as its new exclusive distributor for Denmark.
Matrix Sales became an exclusive distributor of Visual Productions in the last quarter of 2020. It is now fully responsible for sales, project support and technical support in Denmark and distributes a full range of products from Visual Productions available from stock. 
“I am very impressed with the professionalism that one encounters with Visual Productions and its crew in handling service and backup on technical solutions and challenges,” comments Urs Friis-Alstrup, sales manager of Matrix Sales, specialising in light and staging. “A distributor's best wishes for cooperation in a demanding market. Looking forward to many good years together.”
Hana Havrdo

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UK/USA - MXL Microphones is expanding the availability of its Unified Communications/UCC product lines to customers in the UK by partnering with distributor Midwich.
“This opportunity has come at the perfect time for MXL as our distribution network is rapidly evolving to meet market need,” comments Trevor Fedele, MXL director. “The expansion of our distribution capabilities with Midwich benefits everyone in our supply chain, while also laying the groundwork for continued growth.”
“Midwich is delighted to provide MXL mics to our channel partners in the UK and Ireland,” adds Alison Charters, divisional manager at Midwich. “The company’s wide range of products improve audio quality and are an ideal solution for today’s market, whether you’re a solo user on the move, working from home or in the office environment. We see MXL mics as a key audio product

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UK - PLASA, the lead association for the entertainment technology industry, is running a free webinar on Wednesday 24 February to help attendees better understand the basics of the new UKCA marking which is now required for certain products being placed on the market in Great Britain.
Following on from a series of webinars covering business, trade and HR, this session will explore terms and definitions that relate to the new UKCA and CE UKNI markings. PLASA will be joined by expert host Rob Hine, head of commercial partnerships at BSI (an approved body for UKCA), who will break down what these terms mean in the context of UKCA and what this means for those placing products on the market. Rob will also take the time to answer any questions.
This webinar will prove essential for both UK and international businesses who sell products in the UK. Following the session, att

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UK – Martin Audio has unveiled its first constant curvature array, Torus, alongside new 3D prediction and optimisation software, Display 3. Both were formally showcased for the first time online at a recent ‘virtual’ launch event.
For applications that typically require a throw between 15-30m (50-100ft), a full-blown line array is not always practical, optimal or affordable. Conversely, a point source solution may not be sufficient in coverage and SPL. “Torus is a constant curvature array designed to fill that gap,” says Martin Audio, “combining optimised coverage, SPL profile and cost efficiency.”
However, Dom Harter, managing director, adds: “It is much more than just another constant curvature array. Torus was in development for three years in an exhaustive bid to further the acoustic concept and performance achievable.
“Typically, constant

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Under Pressure - Chancellor Rishi Sunak is under renewed pressure to provide greater financial security to the arts sector’s self-employed workforce in the forthcoming Budget, as the findings of a new inquiry warn of a talent exodus without support.
The Inquiry into the Future of Self-Employment has been carried out by Prospect – the parent union of BECTU – and calls on the chancellor to end “the exclusions from the government’s income support packages”, which have seen millions of self-employed and freelance workers fall through the gaps of existing financial support schemes.
As part of the inquiry’s research, a survey of more than 2,200 self-employed workers was carried out, of which 39% were trade union members.
BECTU head Philippa Childs gave evidence to the inquiry and said: "Workers in the creative industries have been left with

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USA - Last year, in the midst of the pandemic, Squeek Lights owner Victor Zeiser converted the Ruby Stage at his company’s Middlesex. NJ facility into a performance space for livestreams and video productions.
Rigged with Chauvet Professional Rogue BeamWash fixtures, the new studio was well-received, attracting name bands like Motionless in White and The Wonder Years, in addition to hosting the chart-topping trio AJR for their Biden Presidential Inauguration, as well as their appearance on The Late Late Show With James Corden.
While most people at his improvised studio were watching the performers on stage, Zeiser was focusing his attention on LDs like Mike Null (Motionless in White) and Ezra Donellan (AJR) and their crews as they worked cameras and light to make these productions click. His observations led him to shake things up at his successful Ruby Stage

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UK - Audiologic and TP-Link have announced a UK technology collaboration that has delivered a turnkey network solution optimised to ‘support the deployment and performance of business-class AV systems, through a range of pre-configured PoE+ switches’. The network solution offers the community a way of making networking plug and play.
The two companies joined forces to optimise a selection of TP-Link UK’s business-class PoE+ switches to power and support the level of AV traffic from professional deployments. Typically, this includes microphones, loudspeakers, processors, computers and cameras. A custom pre-configuration written specifically for professional AV installs was developed by Audiologic and integrated into TP-Link UK’s TL-SG2210MP - JetStream 10-Port Gigabit Smart PoE Switch with 8-Port PoE+ and T2600G-28MPS - JetStream 24-Port Gigabit L2 Managed PoE+ Switc

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UAE - Procom Middle East has been recognised as a ‘power user’ of ON LX's Ctrl for iPad App.
Procom is a professional audio, lighting, video, rigging, and stage effects equipment supplier based in the UAE with a wide portfolio of entertainment technology brands hardware sales and distribution.
Ctrl for iPad first made its debut in 2018 and has been used in over 56 countries with over 21,000 downloads in the past six months alone. The idea behind the application is to give AV integrators and live events technicians a canvas to create a bespoke control interface using images, buttons, sliders and more, all capable of sending commands to different pieces of AV hardware.
Wiam Boutine of Procom comments, "Dynamic and complex lighting, audio and video installations are no longer exclusive to professional venues and sophisticated event stages. They are everywhere: f

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USA - Lightware Visual Engineering has announced the opening of its newest branch to expand its presence across the West Coast area. Co-incidentally, Steve Alexander joins as general manager of the US West Region.
“We are delighted to welcome Steve Alexander to our team,” says Jason Tirado president, Lightware Inc. “Steve and I have been personal friends and professional colleagues for decades. Steve is one of the brightest minds in AV and one of the smartest people I know. He will be charged with ramping up our presence in the thirteen states in the Western Region.”
“Lightware has been a growing presence in the market for the last several years,” says Alexander. “After meeting the team and completing my research, I am fully convinced that the Lightware brand is at a tipping point. I cannot imagine a more fulfilling development than using my experience to

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USA - LEA Professional has partnered with Lienau AV to serve the company’s growing market in the US Mid-Atlantic Region.
Lienau AV was established in 1948 by founder Charlie Lienau to help electronics manufacturers develop their brands and connect them with the right distribution partners.
“We look for manufacturing partners that have a strong sense of brand identity and unique technologies that provide real value,” commented Chris Hutnick, partner, Lienau AV Associates. “We also like partners with a clear long-term vision. As you might expect from a company that’s been around for three generations, we like to grow things deliberately from the ground up. Establishing strong roots early to provide a stable foundation for maximum growth over time is what we’re all about.”
While 2020 was a challenging year for the industry as a whole, LEA Professional

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USA - The Beacon Jams were a successful eight-week ‘virtual residency’ presented by guitarist and singer-songwriter Trey Anastasio (AKA lead singer of Phish) and MSG Entertainment in New York City’s Beacon Theatre.
The shows were live-streamed free on Twitch at 8pm every Friday through October and November 2020.
The artist played with varied arrangements of his Trey Anastasio Band (TAB), adding and changing line-ups and special guests each week, offering a dynamic mix of live music and interactive entertainment. With up to 12 musicians onstage and the challenge of playing live with no audience in such a famous venue, production and lighting designer Marc Janowitz from E26 Design thought out of the box.
His mission was to adapt and redirect the visual drama and ambience that usually accompany a 3,000 strong live audience as well as light all the performers
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