Positive Vibration began as a DJ and live music event hosted at the Kazimier and Kazimier Garden in Liverpool. This annual reggae appreciation meet-up soon evolved into a fully-fledged festival hosted in the Baltic Triangle, with the inaugural one scooping up the UK’s Best New Festival Award in 2016 and developing a cult following.
I oversaw the design and branding of PV from Vol. 2 onwards, utilising incredible artwork by Taj Francis in several poster designs as well as my own artwork for beer labels, tickets, infographics and on-site decals. I also shot and edited a promotional video made up of footage from the original award-winning Festival in 2016.
I first encountered Bring The Fire Project in 2013 after their performance lit up Threshold Festival. As Liverpool’s first and finest flow/fire-arts collective, they appear regularly at key events and festivals across the city, many of which I have documented for them.
As well as making videos, I designed their logo, which is usually displayed very prominently against the black hoodies they often wear at the events when not dressed in costume. The symmetrical design shows two hooded figures cradling a burst of flame, with magenta used as a feature colour for the word FIRE and the flame itself.
As the designer for Rebel Soul, I was responsible for the branding and visual identity for three successive ‘Voodoo Ball’ events from 2014-2016. Each event had a highly distinctive motif, complete with costumes, acts and on-location theming, to make the ‘Alternative Halloween’ Ball one of Liverpool’s most iconic nights out.
2014’s event had a Mexican-inspired ‘Day of the Dead’ theme, utilising heart, skull and flower imagery and the deathly visage of La Catrina.
2015 explored the Latin American legend of El Coco (the ‘bogeyman’) with a poster designed to emulate horror and B-movie artwork from the 1950s.
2016’s ball depicted a dystopian 1980s Afrofuturist saga set between three factions – the Afropunks, the Afrolords, and the mysterious Afronauts.
As well as the poster designs themselves, I was highly involved in the events’ overall look and theming, from the icons used for 2016’s factions to teaser gifs, and artwork for accompanying events (such as the Wake the Dead Parade and Day of the Dead family event).
I also produced promo videos for both the 2015 and 2016 events.
I was fortunate enough to attend the 84th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2016 – a marathon endurance race for prototype and GT cars run once a year at Circuit de la Sarthe in France.
A long-held childhood dream of mine was to stay up for the full duration of the race; after visiting for the first time in 1993 as a 6-year-old, where I was blown away by the electricity and excitement of a full-blooded race through the night, I was finally able to realise this ambition, 23 years later. This is what I saw.
I filmed the fifth Threshold Festival of Music & Arts on 27-29 March 2015, and later put together a montage video by pooling footage with other videographers who had captured the event.
The retrospective was used as promo ahead of the sixth Threshold in 2016.
As part of my role as director of the Liverpool-based events company Rebel Soul, I designed a number of gig posters as well as overseeing the company’s overall branding & merchandise ‘look’ and the occasional video.
The logo itself was derived from a piece of artwork by our good friend, sound wizard and musician Adam Hanley, framed inside a reuleaux triangle similar in shape to a plectrum. The bespoke wordmark is fluid and flowing, evoking the rounded fonts commonly used in vinyl and record culture.
Each event we put on had a very distinct vibe, ranging from the acoustic sanctum of a Scandinavian seafarers church, to an open-air carnival of all things Jamaican. Several of the events became distinct entities in their own right – Positive Vibration and The Voodoo Ball for example.
I filmed the fourth Threshold Festival of Music & Arts over 28-30 March 2014 and recorded the thoughts of the three festival directors on the final day.
This retrospective looks back at a very important year in the history of the event, as it sought to establish itself as an important platform for grassroots music, performance and visual art in the NW and beyond.
I shot the event alternating between two different cameras and opted to utilise a lot of slow motion footage in the edit.
| 2 x Camera Op / Sound Recordist / Editor | 3m 22s |
I filmed the third annual Threshold Festival on Sat 9th & Sun 10th March 2013. The footage was edited into a montage looking back at the musicians, artists and performers who had delighted the crowds in Camp & Furnace and other venues around the Baltic Triangle. The retrospective was set to the backdrop of ‘Spinning Yarns’ by local band Book Thieves, which I had coincidentally filmed a performance of during the event.
