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Recovery Grants - Twenty-eight performing arts organisations have been awarded a share of £75m in the latest round of Culture Recovery Grants. Theatres including London’s Old Vic, Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Northampton Royal and Derngate and Shakespeare’s Globe have all been granted between £1m and £3m each in the first of two rounds for this strand. Six museums and one visual arts organisation were also awarded grants as part of the scheme.
Recipients include: Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre Trust - £3,000,000; English National Ballet - £3,000,000; Newcastle Theatre Royal Trust - £3,000,000; The Old Vic Theatre Trust - £3,000,000; Shakespeare’s Globe - £2,985,707; Sadler’s Wells - £2,975,000; Adlib Audio - £1,650,356; Fabric Life - £1,514,262; Lights Control Rigging Productions - £1,076,179 and The Octagon Theatre Trust - £620,232.
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Thailand - Powersoft has appointed M.I. Engineering as distributor for Thailand. Established in 1994, M.I. Engineering offers a wide range of audio solutions to a variety of projects, from home cinema to fixed installations. The company is a member of the Mahajak Group, a full service importer of sound system products.
“We pride ourselves in providing excellent service and quality audio products to our customers, which drives us to always be aware of the best solutions available on the market,” comments Attapol Praisri, M.I. Engineering’s product manager - professional audio division. “Everything that we have in our arsenal, not only suits our philosophy, but also the systems our customers want to build. Having Powersoft added to our portfolio is going to strengthen this position.”
M.I. Engineering was introduced to Powersoft last January by Arthur Soh, Power
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Germany - Last year the Bremen-based service provider AVM Veranstaltungstechnik, chose to make a significant investment in Coda Audio systems. The company, led by managing director, Jens Wiegandt, took delivery of a range of sound reinforcement, including the compact arena line array AiRAY system, SCP-F subwoofers, APS (Arrayable Point Source), APS-SUBs, as well as LINUS DSP loudspeaker management amplifiers.
In the months before the Coronavirus pandemic struck, the systems had provided sound at top events such as the Summertime@Norderney and Tabularazza festivals, as well as at a host of concerts and corporate events.
“In the first instance, we chose Coda because we consider them to be a very technically innovative company. We were impressed by the excellent sound characteristics and high output they achieve from such compact and lightweight systems,” commented Ma

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USA - ETC has postponed any participation in traditional trade shows until July next year. “Out of concern for the safety of its employees and global community, ETC has announced that it will not participate in traditional trade show exhibitions until July 2021,” says a statement. “With the pandemic affecting many people’s ability and desire to travel, the company has instead decided to focus its resources on remote demos and online events.”
The statement continues, “A major part of the trade show experience is the chance to see the latest gear and get one-on-one face time with product experts. With this in mind, ETC has been hard at work converting in-house demo spaces throughout the company’s offices into studios for online product demonstrations. Customers may now use an online portal to schedule live, one-on-one demos of some of the company’s newest fixtu

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USA - The Meyer Sound education team is returning with a series of Spacemap Go roundtable discussions in November and December. Each session will welcome questions from attendees and be answered by a team of panellists. The roundtables will also focus on different features of Meyer Sound’s new Spacemap Go spatial sound design and mixing tool.
Roundtable 1, What is Spacemap Go: Getting started quickly and programming offline (4 November) will explain how to get started, the components of a Spacemap Go system, the concepts of a Spacemap as well as provide a general application overview.
Roundtable 2, Implementing Spacemap Go into your workflow: System example and saving your work (11 November) will explore building multiple Spacemaps for a simple loudspeaker configuration, plus saving projects and snapshots. Regardless of a system’s size, Spacemap conce

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USA - Harman Professional Solutions has announced the addition of 10 free Live Workshops available for registration.
From musicians and performers to designers and programmers, upcoming workshops feature audio and lighting experts who have extensive industry knowledge and experience. Collectively, the presenters have worked with various artists including Bob Dylan, Carrie Underwood, Green Day, Janet Jackson, John Mellencamp, Kenny Rogers, Lionel Richie, Lou Reed, Marilyn Manson, Michael Jackson, Natalie Cole, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Styx, The Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, U2, Van Halen and many more.
The workshops open for registration include: The Art of Perfect Playback in Lighting Design with Michael Keller (27 October), A Brief User’s Manual For A Lighting Career with Benny Kirkham (28 October), The ABC's of Awesome Lighting Technology with Brad Schiller (2

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USA - For more than four decades, the Dee Events Centre (DEC) on the campus of Weber State University (WSU) in Ogden, Utah has served as the home court of the NCAA Division I WSU Wildcats men’s and women’s basketball teams and played host to many Big Sky Conference championship games. This summer, the domed arena welcomed its newest ‘player’ - a new L-Acoustics Kara(i) loudspeaker system designed and installed by Salt Lake City’s Poll Sound.
Capable of seating nearly 11,600 spectators in its circular bowl, the Dee Events Centre is a multipurpose venue. It has also hosted its share of other college and professional sports, major touring concerts, commencements, religious and community events, and much more. Although the school has continually invested in various upgrades to the venue over the years, one thing that has remained unchanged for more than a quarter centu

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Portugal - NEXT-proaudio has opened a new logistics centre that will operate as an extension to the company’s factory in Porto. Utilising three new automatic logistics software programmes (online interactive platform, Internal logistic software NXT and an automatic packing optimisation software) all based on the 4.0 technology, the new centre will significantly increase the available space, flexibility and efficiency of the company’s warehousing and all domestic and international operations, says NEXT.
The new logistics centre provides 1000sq.m of floor space for warehousing and logistics, as well as office space for sales, marketing and logistics control. The centre is located in Porto, 10km away from the main port and airport, making transport and logistics “easy and convenient”.
The centre is already in operation and gearing up for the launch of NEXT Audioco

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UK - Five event professionals encapsulated the trials and tribulation of the UK’s events sector on the Survival Tour, 3-18 October. Their 1,700km ride traversed over a hundred venues closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, where the riders met the people who would have normally produced all kinds of events (insights into their journey can be seen here).
It was a bitter-sweet experience for the riders, both physically and psychologically, as Proper Productions’ Mark Ward explains: “Without any events to work on, we clipped our barely trained legs into our pedals, to highlight the dire plight of our industry. It was inspiring to bring together the venues and people along our route and hear tales of their personal circumstances and battles first hand. The support has been

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South Africa - Making a decision to swim rather than sink, Sound HQ Solutions along with production manager Sharif Baker, who is also the chairman of TPSA and spokesperson for #LightSAred, have survived the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa with fewer bumps and bruises than many other companies during this tough time.
They recently launched their new Festival Studio in Muldersdrift, Johannesburg, a hybrid and virtual facility which includes outdoor stages, and are confident that they are able to pull off a variety of festivals and events for their niche gospel, jazz and music markets.
Alvin Bruinders, the owner of technical supply company Sound HQ Solutions, started working with Sharif Baker some 20 years ago on MY Joyous Celebration, a gospel powerhouse formed in 1996 to celebrate the political change in South Africa and the peaceful transition into democracy.

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UK - Epic, the company behind Unreal Engine, has finalised the refurbishing of its London-based Innovation Lab, including a complete virtual production LED stage featuring ROE Visual LED products.
Epic Games, known for its video games, develops the Unreal Engine realtime 3D creation tool. This game engine not only powers their internally developed video games such as Fortnite and Infinity Blade series but is used to develop the virtual backgrounds and sets that made virtual production in film possible.
Since the technique of LED virtual production was explored and the first pioneering steps were taken, both Unreal engine and ROE Visual have been involved.
“ROE had already proven itself at the very cutting-edge and high end of LED virtual production with its pioneering use on Star Wars Mandalorian. It was important for us at Epic to give c

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Japan - Established in 1995, All Creation is a professional construction team that provides stage setup, LED assembly, lighting installation, TV, movie set assembly, and other event services.
The collaboration between All Creation and Prolyte dates back to 15 years ago. At that time, bolts were the mainstream for connecting truss flange surfaces, and work would not progress without an impact driver. “However, Prolyte truss is easy to be connected by a hammer, and I was surprised and interested in the overwhelmingly fast assembly speed without worrying about forgetting to tighten the bolts,” says Koichi Okajima, CEO of All Creation.
Back in the day, there was a concern about the lack of experienced engineers in Japan. Safety issues and personnel training were the most discussed topics in All Creation. More importantly, they are the present and future subjects to be

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UK - Over the last five months, the #WeMakeEvents campaign has been raising awareness around the current plight facing the live entertainment sector and its urgent need for financial support if it is to survive the COVID-19 crisis.
With the introduction of tier systems and the continued local lockdowns, hosting live events has become even more difficult than before. The campaign is therefore continuing to make its voice heard with the next stage of its protest action - Survival in the Square.
Gary White, lead producer of #WeMakeEvents, comments: “The latest government support packages, although welcome, are not reaching those who need them the most and will only benefit a small group. Larger, more meaningful action needs to be taken and, until it does, we will still be here campaigning.”
From 26 October (Monday), Survival in the Square will comprise a series

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USA - Continuing its commitment to cultivate future generations of designers, global design and BIM software provider Vectorworks will open submissions for its fifth Vectorworks Design Scholarship on 1 December.
The scholarship programme invites undergraduate and graduate students in major disciplines related to architecture, landscape architecture, landscape, entertainment and interior design to submit either new or old projects.
“Last year, we received over 1,600 submissions worldwide and we’re looking forward to getting even more submissions this year,” said marketing programmes director Alice Lowy. “The Vectorworks Design Scholarship is an amazing opportunity for students to take the next step in their professional development by submitting to win scholarship prizes while showing off their creative designs.”
Students will be able to submit their be

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Europe - OCA Alliance, the not-for-profit trade association that exists to promote and support the AES70 standard for open control architecture, has launched a new website with better, more easily accessible information and new resources for anyone that is interested in adopting or using AES70 in their projects.
“Our mission is to simplify the lives of AV professionals everywhere by encouraging and facilitating the adoption of AES70 as a universal, standards-based control and monitoring protocol,” says Bosch Communications’ platform strategist, Ethan Wetzell - also marketing committee chair for the OCA Alliance. “It’s a complex subject and knowledge levels vary enormously, so our first task was to distil the key messages so that the benefits are immediately clear to all. Then, we

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Singapore - Prolights has entered into a distribution agreement for Malaysia and Singapore, with Acoustic & Lighting Systems. The Asian company is a household name in distribution of professional sound, lighting and accessories solutions.
General manager, Eugene Yeo, comments: “We support customers in many sectors of the industry, and thrive to offer them the best solutions for their applications. We see Prolights as a manufacturer with a vast product catalogue, allowing to tailor our customer's needs to their offering. Their tech-savvy R&D and sales make our lives very easy - we can see they are product-oriented and very passionate about the products they release.”
“We wanted to reinforce our presence in Asia, and Acoustic & Lighting Systems are the result of our ambition,” says Paolo Albani, international sales manager for Prolights. “Eugene and

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Lockdown Priorities - When asked what the government should keep open in the event of a second national lockdown, just 2% of people said theatres should be the highest priority. A YouGov poll of more than 1,640 people asked each to rank what the government should keep open in order of priority. Top was schools and nurseries, with 57% putting this as the highest priority.
Only 2% said theatres, cinemas and art venues should be the top priority, just below pubs at 4%, while 12% said arts venues should be the government’s lowest priority. When it comes to pubs, 4% said reopening them should be the government’s top priority, compared with 24% who said they should this should be the lowest priority. Only 8% of the public said the government should prioritise universities above the other types of establishments. But almost two in five people (39%) ranked them as their second p

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UK - Immersive experience specialists Technically Creative have formed a collaboration with five other creative experiential providers to launch the Vigilante Group. The newly-formed group specialises in advertising, film, experiential spaces and design.
The companies involved are Cod Steaks - design and build artisans focusing on museums and branded attractions; Burning reel - film production; Creep -a film, animation and visual effect postproduction company; Afew - designers and developers specialising digital experiences for the web; Arcadia - event specialists, and Technically Creative.
Marc Broadbent, founder and director of Technically Creative says: “I am so excited for the companies, including our own, that have come together to form this exciting new collaboration. The Vigilante Group showcases the culmination of the achievements by so many of the dedicate

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Australia - Situated in Melbourne’s east, the community at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church was being crowded out by a suburb fast-tracked for urban growth.
Needing to relocate to a quieter location with room to expand, they became aware that a short distance down the road the St. James Uniting Church, with its striking mid-century early modern architecture, was looking to sell.
A deal was done which duly led to a full-blown renovation of the church, including a sensitive, high quality audio visual fitout in the heritage-listed building. This included a Martin Audio O-Line as the sound reinforcement system.
St. Paul’s Lutheran found an integrator in Mozaix that really understood house of worship requirements, and director Paul Tucker immediately struck up a rapport with the church’s building committee.
Paradoxically, the original St James space had been

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USA - New tools mean new workflows, and ETC has a long history of creating online tools to help Eos users evolve their programming skills. Now ETC is has announced the release of a new video learning series focusing on Eos Augment3d, the new 3D programming environment released with Eos v3.0.
The 38-part video series may be found on YouTube or in the Expert Topics section of the Eos Family Video Learning Series, along with a new workbook to accompany the videos.
The video series includes instruction on getting started with Augment3d, with topics such as importing 3D models and objects, adding, patching, moving and focusing fixtures, working with focus palettes in XYZ mode, and working with Staging Mode in Live and Blind. Additional videos take users through the Fixture Position Estimation Tool, which uses a series of focus palettes to calculate your fixtures’ position

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UK - Green Hippo is launching an online version of its popular HippoSchool training for the first time, making it universally accessible in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The move means more emerging users of its Hippotizer Media Server range can access learning in a virtual environment ‘anywhere, anytime, while adhering to social distancing guildelines’.
HippoSchool Online offers complete basic training of the Hippotizer ZooKeeper software - the control interface for Hippotizer and the hub for real-time control of the engine and all of its components. Sessions consist of two online courses that take approximately five hours to complete, with more courses in the pipeline. They are modular, with videos that the user can follow in their own time, featuring ‘Try It Yourself’ tasks to ensure full immersion into as-real-world use of the feature-packed software.

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UK - PLASA Online, a virtual programme of talks, panels and presentations designed to help industry professionals navigate the COVID era, was hosted by PLASA last week.
Thousands signed up in advance to watch the specially-curated programme, which spanned business advice, industry insights, technical developments, and product presentations. For those wishing to catch up on any of the sessions, the full programme will remain online until 16 November - recordings from each session can be requested by completing a form.
The most popular session was an exploration of the 2020 Changes to Portable Appliance Testing Requirements with electrical expert and author of the new IET Code of Practice James Eade. In this session, Eade gave the viewers an overview of the recent chan

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Europe - Registration is now open for Prolyte’s first free webinar. Taking placer next Wednesday 21 October (11:00 CEST), Eric Laanstra outlines the strengths of Prolyte trusses with the focus on multipurpose series.
Eric will also cover in his 60 minutes webinar topics about truss in all its aspects; from strength in connection methods, forces, design methods and interpretation of numbers.
Says Prolyte, “To achieve the number one customer satisfaction is always part of our philosophy. Save your seat and invite your friends and partners for the first Prolyte webinar. We will provide you the first-class education in the field of trussing and rigging.”

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USA - The Audio Engineering Society is inviting students and educators to attend the AES Show Student Week, being held 19-23 October as part of its Audio Engineering Month events.
Events will include exclusive Technical Programme content, meetings and events hosted by the AES Student Delegate Assembly (SDA), a virtual education and career fair, student competitions, student project critiques and more. AES Show Student Week partners are Audio-Technica, Genelec, IK Multimedia, and the Recording Academy Producers and Engineers Wing.
Several highlights of AES Show Student Week include the Student Recording Competitions in six categories (Traditional Acoustic Recording, Traditional Studio Recording, Modern Studio Recording & Electronic Music, Sound for Visual Media, Remix, and Immersive Audio); the Saul Walker Student Design Competition sponsored by API (gear and soft
  1. SLS appointed Prolyte distributor for Portugal
  2. iMAG Displays invests in Brompton’s Hydra
  3. Symetrix launches community forum
  4. Highlite UK hits the road with new product tour
  5. PLASA Online 2020 running all week
  6. PLASA MD gives evidence to the House of Lords
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