When the Ibiza club brand, Clockwork Orange, decided to hold a UK festival near Chelmsford to celebrate its 30th anniversary, they turned to SAFECROWDS Group to provide an integrated approach to security planning and delivery, including all security and safeguarding requirements.
New site
While the brand had previously held successful festival events around the world, along with club nights in the UK, the inaugural Clockstock Festival with a capacity of 15,000 was planned for a completely new and rural site, which held fresh security challenges, with no site-specific data or experience to draw on.
Fortunately, the SAFECROWDS Group team were able to leverage our experience of similar events, and early engagement with the client meant we were able to advise on all aspects of crowd management, security, stewarding and safeguarding months in advance of the event. This included assisting the client in developing crowd management plans for the festival, incorporating security and counter terrorism planning, as well as attending meetings with third party stakeholders, such as the local council and the police. This collaborative approach meant that we drew on local knowledge and the client’s experience of previous events, as well as our own expertise.
Meticulous preparation
As the event drew nearer, we prepared the paperwork needed for the crowd management and security deployment, including event-specific handbooks for all personnel deployed during the event. In parallel with planning the security for Clockstock, we had been busy creating our security and counter terrorism lanyards, which provide a quick reference guide to incident response and medical emergencies. The Clockstock Festival was the first event at which we used our new lanyards, and they have been standard issue for our security teams ever since.
Clockstock was also the first event where we deployed our emergency grab bags, which include a resuscitation mask, a fire extinguisher, a loudhailer, a first aid kit, and an acid attack kit, alongside our usual RAPAID emergency bandages kits, ensuring that we would be ready should any kind of incident occur.
In the days prior to the start of the festival, all personnel appointed for the deployment were briefed via Microsoft Teams and introduced to their supervisor. These calls were also used to provide a walkthrough of the festival site to ensure familiarisation even before team members arrived at the location.
Co-ordinated approach
In addition to using technology to brief and familiarise the team prior to the event, we also leveraged the value of specialist software during the festival. Alongside our Guardhouse system, which provides digital clocking in/out functionality and management information for every member of our team, we also used Halo software, a state-of-the-art event monitoring and reporting tool. In this way, we provided the client with complete transparency about who was deployed in every role throughout the event, delivering confidence in the credentials and experience of every member of the team.
Our integrated security and safeguarding services at Clockstock Festival included managers and supervisors, resident liaison teams, gate staff, response teams, eviction teams, front of stage pit teams, back stage security, , stewards and safeguarding teams. We also deployed both general purpose security canine teams and drug detection canine teams, which included dogs trained to detect spiking substances. All our security team supervisors and managers wore bodycams and we provided -portable metal detector wands for bag and body search teams at ingress and egress points.
Trained and ready
In addition to ensuring our security and safeguarding plans protected festival goers at Clockstock, we also wanted to ensure that everyone present had a fantastic time and a positive experience of the event. Our resident liaison teams were on hand to ensure we responded quickly to any concerns in the local area, with protocols in place to enable them to contact our control room direct if they had any issues.
Meanwhile, our team has been trained in customer service, spectator safety, first aid, and ACT (Action Counters Terrorism), and SAFECROWDS Group personnel were on hand to help festival goers with everything from finding their friends to tips on the shortest toilet queues.
We provided transport to site for every member of our team, managing egress at the nearest bus station to minimise any disruption to local residents. Once everyone was on site, each shift began with a full team briefing, to ensure that every member of our team knew exactly what was required of them and was aware of any threats or considerations. This was critical as we were deploying in excess of 200 people on site and it was essential that they worked together collaboratively and responded quickly to any incidents.
Good times!
The security was put to the test only once, due to a break in at the site overnight. Our security and canine patrol teams responded quickly before any theft or damage could take place, and called the police who arrested the intruders.
The feedback we have received from the event – from the client, the authorities and festival goers – has been extremely positive, and the festival was a huge success, with a fantastic atmosphere shared by 15,000 people!
