Hire Frequencies delivers technical debut at Chalke History Festival

Hire Frequencies has completed its first year as technical supplier for Chalke History Festival, delivering a comprehensive production solution across the seven-day event.

Chalke History Festival is the UK’s largest history festival and draws around 25,000 attendees to a 70-acre site in Wiltshire each year, with more than 175 talks, debates, living history encampments and live music performances.

Hire Frequencies was brought in specifically to improve audio performance and coverage across the site, while also delivering staging, lighting, LED walls and video across five simultaneous stages, each with a different content format and acoustic demands.

During the event, which took place from 22–28 June, Hire Frequencies ensured that no stage was treated the same.

The Guildhall and Moot ran matched Martin Audio TORUS T1215 arrays; the Forum, used for presentations by day and live music by night, ran ground-stacked WPS line arrays; the Henge and outdoor stage ran dedicated CDD-LIVE and FlexPoint systems. With live music in the Forum running directly beside talks in the Moot, cardioid subwoofers and Martin Audio’s Hard Avoid feature were used to contain sound spill and keep both venues clean throughout evening sessions.

To manage the festival’s video-rich, multi-stage content – which would conventionally require three or four laptops and manual video switching per stage – Hire Frequencies deployed its bespoke Portable Production Units (PPUs), compact systems combining camera control, recording and video-wall output in a single unit per stage. The main stage also featured a bespoke, in-house-fabricated scenic backdrop with an integrated Uniview UR Pro 3.9 outdoor LED wall, chosen for its outdoor brightness and durability during seven days of near-36°C heat.

A 28-strong crew delivered the build and live event without disruption.

“Working at Chalke History Festival was a great experience for our team,” says Will Smith, founder and managing director of Hire Frequencies. “It allowed us to showcase exactly what our crew can deliver when it comes to AV and technical support on a large scale. We’re incredibly proud of what we achieved and of the positive feedback we received from both the organisers and attendees.”

“We want to say a huge well done to the Hire Frequencies team for the outstanding AV work throughout the week,” adds James Florence, managing director of Chalke History Festival. “We received so much wonderful feedback, and I certainly noticed the improvements on the screens and with the sound across all the tents. The backdrops created for us were a real highlight too.”