A.C. Lighting Upgrade Lighting System for University of York's Central Hall

29th June 2004

A.C. Lighting's Special Projects division recently upgraded the multi-purpose lighting system in the University of York's Central Hall performance venue.

The University's Concert Series, which is the largest and most varied series in the region, uses the Central Hall as a venue for major choral and orchestral concerts open to members of the public. The hall is also used for a wide variety of other events, including University lectures, shows, degree ceremonies, outside School performances and Conferences.

The University wanted to bring the halls existing lighting system up to date to enable it to offer the hall as a multi-purpose venue for hire by businesses and other educational establishments in York.

A.C. were commissioned to specify, supply and install a new lighting system which could make the best possible use of the existing rigs fixtures, whilst also upgrading the necessary parts of the rig to create a lighting system suitable for the venues multi-purpose requirements.

One of the major challenges faced by Project Manager Adam Beaumont was the short timescale available for the upgrade. The University could only close the hall for two weeks, and even during this period the room had to be made available for several critical lectures. This meant that the A.C. install team had to carefully plan the work around specific times when the venue was needed for lectures, and keep the building clear for the general public to enter.

In fact, the timing of the installations completion was so critical that when work finished midday on a Thursday - and a day ahead of schedule - the University went straight into dressing the hall for a series of shows over the weekend starting on Friday evening. This meant that the new lighting system was subjected to its first major test during the actual shows, which all went off without a hitch.

Since completion the hall has been in almost constant use for a variety of lectures and performances, including the Institute of Electrical Engineers' prestigious Faraday Lecture tour, York Symphony Orchestra and by York local council for Performing Arts school drama productions.

The equipment supplied and installed consists of 96 ways of Zero 88 Chilli DMX dimming, a Zero 88 Bull Frog lighting control console, Chroma-Q 8 way DMX splitter, various custom internally wired lighting bars and facility panels, and 2 Martin Mac 250 Krypton moving lights

Oliver Nash, Audio-Visual Technician for the University of York, commented "A.C. managed to do the job in a short turnaround. We knew that getting the lighting rig installed before the first show set-up would be tight, so they exceeded our expectations by managing to complete with a whole day to spare. Being such a tight install we also expected a certain amount of teething problems with our first shows, but the rig has performed faultlessly since going into use."

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