For this year’s Unilever Christmas party, the theme was ’20s Prohibition’ so it wouldn’t be appropriate to use LED screen as the main feature as last year. Instead CSP designed an ornate set, perfectly suited to the theme.

James was asked to design and operate the lighting with equipment provided by CSP, including Clay Paky Alpha Spot 300s, Alpha Beam 700s, Alpha Wash 575s, Martin Mac 550s, Mac 250s and SGM Palcos.

On top of all the intelligent lighting was 200m of tungsten festoon lighting to add a rich glowing canopy over the dining space.

The excellent catering was provided by Barretts and the marquee by Millennium Marquees.

Basic Monkey supplied a Jands Vista S3 console to control the lighting, running the new ‘Byron’ software. This was the ideal event to use the beta software for the first time as the evening is ‘busked’ as opposed to having lots of programmed cues, meaning we can get away with things more easily if there are any software glitches.

The new version performed very well and a detailed report was sent to Jands afterwards to aid in their further development of the software.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the evening and many comments were made about the standard of decoration and entertainment.