Sky’s employee recognition event goes regional with Rouge

Skyfest, Sky’s annual employee recognition event, is going regional – Rouge Events is working with the broadcaster and expanding the festival to include three new regional events, Skyfest Metro in Leeds and Skyfest Local in Birmingham and Bristol.

Established Skyfest Big Weekend events in London and Edinburgh will also take place.

The five events will take place across July and August with more than 30,000 Sky employees, their friends and families expected to attend.

Rouge is again responsible for the design and delivery of all the Skyfest events – a massive logistical task with five grass fields to transform into full working festival sites with toilets, trackway, fencing and associated structural works including rain cover for up to 10,000 people at any time. The total production period will last just over six weeks with the first events taking place in London this coming weekend at the Grasshoppers RFC, Osterley.

New venues have been sourced for the other locations: Hopetoun House in South Queensferry, Edinburgh, Wellington Place in Leeds, The Pavillion, Moor Lane, Birmingham and Tockington Manor School, Bristol. The additional events will provide an opportunity for a further 6,000 people to attend this summer.

Nathan Homan, creative director, Rouge Events, commented: “We’re thrilled to have been appointed to deliver Skyfest again. Each year the event gets bigger and better and offers a fantastic variety of activities and entertainment for all ages. There have certainly been additional challenges this year, producing a series of events that run over the same period as the Olympics. We started planning and securing suppliers much earlier and have been working hard to ensure we still get the best possible value and quality in what will be an exceptionally busy summer.”

Entertainment at Skyfest will include Example, DJ Fresh, Stooshe, The Cribs, Pixie Lott and The Pigeon Detectives, and for the first time a second bandstand stage has been added to the proceedings.