Writhlington School
Hot off the back from our involvement with Redland Green School, Theatek’s Chris Horseman was invited to act as a consultant to Writhlington School’s brand new 400 seat theatre space. The project, which started for Chris in February 2009, has just been completed and was part of the £25 million new school buildings. Chris has been working closely with Derek Quilter from BANES Council, Andrew Lintern from Capita Symonds (part of the Kier Western Construction Group) and Head-teacher of Writhlington School, Marie Getheridge.
The school had an ambitious and visionary brief. They required a space that could accommodate every day school activities, like school assemblies, it needed to be a suitable theatrical teaching environment, and also the school wanted to hire out the space for community and professional theatre and conferences. The facilities and equipment therefore had to be considered carefully. Chris comments:
“We started the consultation process by establishing what the school wanted from the performance space and then interpreted their brief into a working model for the construction and installation teams. There were various challenges along the way including eliminating the need to climb a ladder for focussing lanterns and finding suitable rooms to double as dressing rooms and creating access to them. We contracted Unusual Rigging to engineer a track with a chair attached which was installed behind the advanced lighting bar. A person can now safely focus the lanterns by being strapped into the chair and rolling along the track. Adding a door from the music practice rooms created easily accessible dressing room accommodation.”
The space had to be suitably equipped to a high standard and we helped the school to choose equipment from world-leading manufacturers including ETC, Selecon, James Thomas, D & B Audiotechnik, Allen & Heath and Sennheiser amongst others. The school was officially opened on 25th May 2010 by HRH Duke of Kent.
Theatek welcomes enquiries from schools and colleges. We are able to offer friendly help and advice for everything from school shows through to refurbishment and equipment purchases. Please get in touch to find out more.