This year marked the 20th birthday of Leeds Festival, bringing two whole decades of live music to Yorkshire. A huge milestone for AP Security also, whom have been providing crowd management to the Leeds event since it commenced in 1999.
And what better way for AP to celebrate 20 years at Leeds Festival, by seeing an expansion of our services from the arena and into the campsites for 2018. This has been our biggest Festival operation to date, with around 1,000 staff deployed across the site.
“Gaining the campsites this year was fantastic news for the team. We were delighted to expand our service to Festival Republic across a whole range of shows, also taking on the campsites in addition to our traditional Arena work at Latitude Festival just a month earlier,” summarises Andrew Stevens, AP’s Director of Strategic Development, “Whilst Latitude shares some similarities with Leeds, other than audience demographic and artist profile, it did provide us with a foundation of processes when managing both arena and campsites. These processes were then fine-tuned to apply to a much larger event during the imperative planning stages.”
“When you take into account the planning and site visits that go into an event, it can take up over 6 months of the year. Our first deployment took place a month before the festival gates opened to the public,” adds Jimmy Norrie, AP’s Senior Operations Manager and Head of Campsites at Leeds Festival. “We had an overnight team on the Tuesday night of show week looking after the early arrivals until gates opened on the Wednesday morning. Overall it has been a challenging but fruitful experience, taking care of customers both in the arena and back at their tent is a task we do not take lightly, their safety being our main priority. We worked closely and with guidance from Festival Republic and other stake holders in implementing strategies to reduce crime across the festival site.”
Leeds Festival prides itself on attracting such iconic bands over the years, whilst always remaining relevant with current music tastes. Headliners for 2018 included Kings of Leon, Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco and Kendrick Lemar, with a blazing secret set from Bring me the Horizon and the whole team at A.P. look forward to what 2019 has to offer!
