UK Theatre just announced the nominees for the 2014 UK Theatre Awards. Established in 2005, the awards recognize successful management in performing arts organizations throughout the United Kingdom. This year’s nominees include:

The Renee Stepham Award for Best Presentation of Touring Theatre
• Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury
• Sadler’s Wells Theatre
• Shakespeare’s Globe

Achievement in Marketing
• Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse
• mac Birmingham
• Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch

Theatre Employee/Manager of the Year
• Hedda Beeby – Watermill Theatre, Newbury
• Mary Elliott – Theatre by the Lake, Keswick
• Henny Finch – Headlong Theatre
• Alice Saunders – The Courtyard, Hereford

Promotion of Diversity
• Hackney Empire
• Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse
• Watford Palace

My Theatre Matters! UK’s Most Welcoming Theatre Award
• Clwyd Theatr Cymru
• Newcastle Theatre Royal
• The Watermill Theatre
• Theatre Royal Plymouth
• Wales Millennium Centre

For the My Theatre Matters! Award, more than 49,000 public votes were cast and 256 venues were in competition.

“It is has been wonderful to see the votes flooding in for this year’s Most Welcoming Theatre Award,” said Julian Bird, chief executive of UK Theatre. “Theatres play vital roles at the heart of our local communities, and this award gives audiences the chance to shout about how much they value the work of their local venue.”

The awards ceremony will take place October 19 in London’s Guildhall.

(photo credit: jacqueline.poggi via photopin cc)

First there was the music. Then came the strobe lights, dry-ice machines, and lasers. It seems electronic dance music (EDM) festival organizers have the sensory components down pat. But not quite so fast. Have you considergoing 3-D? The 3DM Music Festival has, and it’s bringing this new experience to the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 1. Here’s how the organizers describe the festival on the event’s Facebook page.

“The 3DM concept employs the power of multiple screens secured above and all around a concert venue, such that the intensity of a light show literally envelops the room. Imagine the experience of being in a dance club as onstage DJs rock the house, with lights swirling and pulsating—only in this incarnation, three-dimensional visuals from a staggering hundreds of LED light panels transform the night into a seeming live-action geometric kaleidoscope of catapulting, chatoyant, flashing full-color lights that literally permeate the audience.”

The lineup has been set. Now you just need some 3-D glasses, and you’re ready to go.

(Image: 3DM Music Festival)

We love to mention when our members are in the news, and since the 2014 International Convention Center Conference begins tomorrow, this is the perfect time to point out a great article in the October issue of Convene that focuses on convention centers.

“When a convention center transitions to a new management organization—from a public authority to a third-party company, a third-party company to another third-party company, or some other variation—lives and livelihoods hang in the balance,” Christopher Durso wrote in “Convention Centers Under New Management.” “And not everyone is receptive to a new leadership culture.”

The article features IAVM members Teri Orton, general manager of the Hawai’i Convention Center; and Brad Gessner, CFE, senior vice president and general manager of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Orton and Gressner—along with managers from the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the Savannah International Trade and Convention Center—discuss such topics as why they took the job, turnover, meeting the staff, and managing transition.

“We actually retained 98 percent of our staff here [from SMG]. We have just over 75, close to 80 employees. That was a blessing for me, being new to facility management, to have the existing staff here—that most of the employees have been here since the building opened,” Orton said. “The building has been open 15 years, so that says a lot. I looked at it as a positive for me because they knew the facility. I opened my mind to learning as much as I could from them.”

You can read the complete article on Convene‘s website.

(Image: Dana Edmunds)

Drones outside the venue continue to spark discussion and concern, but Cirque Du Soleil has released a beautiful glimpse at what it might look like for them to integrate into the experience happening on stage.

HT to Slate, where you can watch a behind-the-scenes video.

Maine’s Portland Press Herald reports that the managers of the State Theatre will run a 5,000-capacity outdoor concert site on Thompson’s Point next summer.

“The venue will be part of the redevelopment of 30 acres of former industrial land on Thompson’s Point, which eventually will include retail space, offices, residences, a hotel, and the Circus Conservatory of America,” Ray Routhier reported.

Stage location and seating types have yet to be determined, along with how many or what kind of acts will perform on the site.

“[Manager Lauren] Wayne said the venue might attract the kind of acts that play the State Theatre, which holds about 1,800 people, but it is not likely to host country stars since those acts attract larger crowds,” Routhier reported.

Please visit the Portland Press Herald website for the rest of the story.

(Image: www.thompsonspointmaine.com)