THE CHALLENGE

Reimagining a 1-mile area of the Old Town in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to serve as backdrop for a 2-day music and art festival, while being respectful at all times of its place on UNESCO’s World Heritage Preservation List.

The Solution

Our team got up and running quickly on this one, as did our partners.

With the Ministry of Culture being based IN Al Balad, relationships needed to be formed fast & developed directly.

Our Event Safety team approached Balad Beast with the respect it deserved. They, as well as all of our partners, understood the honour it was to be planning and delivering an EDM festival in a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

While this is not the only UNESCO site in which we work, it is one of the most unique and, as a result, one of the most challenging.

The beautiful Old Town of Al Balad, while stunningly beautiful and a superb backdrop for a visual and aural feast such as Balad Beast, presented a very challenging site.

We had a wide range of structural considerations with which to contend. Not the least of these was the likely impact of music at upwards of 105DB would have on the old buildings.

The Result

Over 25,000 people enjoyed 2 days of custom projection-mapping visuals accompanying sets from some of the world’s leading musical acts.

All those lucky enough to attend Balad Beast to date got to enjoy Jeddah in ways they likely never thought possible, with performances from international artists as well as custom-produced and delivered projection mapping across the rich tapestry of architecture in beautiful Al Balad.

All this allowed the storied past of the historic area to converge beautifully with the wondery of the present to the absolute delight of the attending masses across each of the five unique performance venues.

Balad Beast is one of the most breathtaking festival experiences you can have anywhere in the world.

Our Part

Balad Beast is an event we’ve helped deliver twice now as part of the annual calendar of MDLBEAST events on which we work.

Services we provide include:

  • Presence on the Masterplanning Team
  • Health & Safety Strategy development
  • Crowd & Event Safety consultancy
  • Safety by Design consultancy
  • Civil Defense / Ministry of Culture liaison
  • Operational Team deployment
  • Tactical Command provision
  • Stakeholder management
  • Vendor management