Bluedot

FESTIVAL FOCUS

BLUEDOT

Aptly coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 moon landing, the annual science and future tech themed festival is back again for its fourth year with a varied line up of lectures, comedians and music. TPi arrives at the affecting Jodrell Bank Observatory to expand its mind and learn more…

Here at Bluedot, which is now in its fourth year, a veritable culture-clash of experts from various scientific fields and a myriad of musical acts share the stage. Like the acts, the event has very much found its place in the smorgasbord of the annual festival season schedule. Space has been a common theme each year at the festival, but, as 2019 was the celebration of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon, Bluedot rightfully joined in with the festivities. This included one screening of the 2019 film Apollo 11, one unique show projection mapped onto the Lovell Telescope, as well as an event dubbed The Moonbounce in which festivalgoers were encouraged to write messages to be pinged off the surface of the moon – not exactly your usual festival line-up then.

TPi was greeted at the press tent by Ben Robinson, Bluedot’s Festival Director, who delivered his debrief on this year’s event. “We’ve really expanded the site this year due to the demand for the talks we host each year,” stated Robinson, who noted Tim O’Brien’s appearance on Friday was “packed”. Crowd-pleasers like these mean the size of their Mission Control stage has been trebled, he explained, adding, “Over the years, we’ve got to know our audience and what they’re after.”

The varied line-up had, in previous years, created an interesting challenge of audio spill. “So, we created the Tranquillity Base, situated behind the main Lovell Stage,” commented Robinson. “It takes its name from the actual site of the original moon landing. This is the new home of the Mission Control and Contact Stage.”

Continuing the conversation about the redesign was Jon Drape, Managing Director at Ground Control Productions, who said this year’s reinvention was focused on the talks and their capacity to accommodate eager listeners. “It was obvious from 2018 that we were going to have to increase capacity on those stages as well as address the sound spill issues.” Production Manager duties were shared between Jon Green and Tommy Sheals-Barrett. While Sheals-Barrett was over at the Lovell and the Orbit

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