Trifle Anyone?

Oxfords South Parks will be hosting Foodies Festival over bank holiday weekend. Sample dishes from local restaurants and buy fresh produce from Oxfordshire and surrounding counties. Michelin star chefs will be cooking live in the Chefs Theatre.

On top of these delicious delights Matt Dawson is due to make an appearance for the filming of Monster Munchies - a television series celebrating traditional British food by creating them in super size. A Startech stage will be supporting two giant trifles, which apparently originated in our city of dreaming spires. Local teams will battle for recognition of their superior trifle talents.

The wedding season is upon us.

Startech designed, installed and operated lighting for a wedding at the Oxford Town Hall this weekend. Theatrical lighting was applied to highlight the interior architecture of the building. Source fours were employed to project a custom designed gobo onto the dance floor and to create a starry night effect.

New Mixers!

Now added to the Startech hire stock Soundcraft EPM 12 and Yamaha MG 24/14 FX mixers.

The emphasis on Soundcraft EPM mixers is on quality build and user-friendly control surface. Close-tolerance components are used for high accuracy and repeatable settings for EQ and gain controls. Professional 48-volt phantom power caters for condenser microphones of all types and the monitor and headphone output work in parallel allowing  performers to listen on phones whilst the engineer is able to listen on studio monitors. 

Yamaha MG24/14FX are suitable for live sound applications in which a substantial number of sources must be handled efficiently. This model has16 mono inputs and 4 stereo inputs. Microphone levels can be adjusted from -60 dB to +10 dB, while line levels can be adjusted from -34 dB to +10 dB. Channel peak indicators are provided to facilitate optimum level matching.

Green Marketing

Startech employed beanwave to design an “Excellence All Areas” mailer which was sent to Performing Art departments and Event Organisers at schools, colleges and universities. Whilst promoting the company is important we took into serious consideration the environmental impacts and found alternative methods to ensure that products used were from sustainable sources.

Beanwave sourced branded lanyard straps made from 100% sustainable bamboo fibres (which we have also found softer on the skin). The lanyard holder and 8 page inserts were printed locally by Seacourt on FSC certified recycled paper and using vegetable based inks and waterless offset printing. The polythene envelope used was recycled and recyclable.

The mailer had a great response with many bookings appearing for our basic set up - professional result, lighting and PA kits. It wasn’t long before the lanyards were spotted in action on an event site and more requested!

Commotion Festival

Startech supplied a stage and supplemented the lighting and sound for Commotion ‘10 in Kingham, near Chipping Norton and our trademark red canopy is visible by satellite! This annual family friendly festival had a great line up with From the Jam headlining on Saturday. The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band performed and will be back in the area for Truck next weekend. The Jericho Tavern had a stage hosting some of Oxfords finest, see their site for upcoming gigs. The Witchwood School of Rock ran song writing workshops which are continuing throughout the summer at various venues.

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The Festival of the Nine Muses

Startech supplied lighting to The Festival of the Nine Muses hosted in the romantic grounds of Milton Manor House on Saturday.  Performances were carried out throughout the day from 10am into the evening, poetry, theatre, music inspired by the nine daughters of Zeus, King of the Gods and Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memory. Headlining the music acts at the first in this series of festivals was English folk rock musician Johnny Flynn. Listen out for this idyllic celebration of Arcadia next year.

ASIMO

Once again Startech were recruited provide staging and technical production for Honda's robot ASIMO to perform at the opening launch of the Swindon Academy. Specifications for the staging were extremely tight at only 1mm rise/fall over 2m to accommodate this advanced piece of technology. Lighting and audio was supplied to produce a dramatic reveal and exhibition of ASIMO's human like movement and intelligence.