White Light's busy installation team have recently helped Kingsmead School in Enfield, England carry out a massive conversion, turning what the school described as its "dull and dowdy traditional old school hall with its block flooring, wooden chairs, squeaky stage, and harsh fluorescent lighting" into an "exciting, modern theatre space." The transformation of the hall was designed by Tim Foster of Tim Foster Architects, known for their theatre work.
At Kingsmead, they were asked to develop much needed performing facilities for a school that had recently been awarded special status for the performing and visual arts. The result is a rectangular open-space stage with fixed seating for three hundred people which can be used both by the school itself for performances and lectures and rented to outside groups in the local community.
White Light designed and installed the entire technical infrastructure for the theatre. "The aim was to provide a flexible infrastructure for lighting, sound, and video," notes White Light's technical sales manager, Roger Hennigan. "We wanted to make sure that the installation could easily cope with the many uses the school envisaged for the theatre, which included everything from talks and presentations to full-on theatrical productions, while keeping the work required to set up these kind of events to a minimum."
The resulting lighting system includes a custom internally wired grid with 15A outlets connected back to the two LSC EKO 24-way dimmer racks; lighting control is from an LSC maXim console with an LSC ePlate outstation system controlling worklights and houselights. A comprehensive sound infrastructure plus a 5500 lumen video projector with electric roller screen. "The school now has a very good base installation, to which they can easily add equipment on a temporary or permanent basis as needs and funds allow," Hennigan notes.