Improving the lights

Lighting up the stage
The ‘Ruby and her horses’ event is understood to have raised just over £500. This is to go towards necessary improvements to the existing stage lighting equipment in Old Buckenham’s village hall. At present the stage lighting is all analogue and very old. There are two dimmer racks which service the on stage lights and the ones on the lighting bar. These dimmer racks are obsolete, one of the circuits has already failed and it is doubtful, should another circuit fail, that an electrician would even agree to touch it. For each production nowadays the Players have to hire a converter box to go from analogue to digital, run cabling along the side of the hall and further heavy duty cabling from the lighting bar to the digital dimmer rack.

There would be two stages to upgrade the lighting and the staging.
Stage 1 involves replacing all cabling and replacing with digital, plus replaying two lighting bars in the hall and on stage with internally wired bars, hard wired to the existing and one new digital dimmer rack. Also hardwired cabling from the lighting box at back of hall to the dimmer racks at side of stage and the installation of a new power supply and consumer board. This will save the players an enormous amount of effort each show and also benefit other users of the hall with a modern, easy to use, fixed lighting system for flower displays, concerts, etc, leading to increased income from ad hoc hirers for events and discos. Total costs, including labour would be in the region of £5,000.
Stage 2 (which could be incorporated into stage 1 as one project if a benefactor or some grant funding can be found) would include the dismantling of the existing false ceiling, installation of new mid-stage curtaining, installation of a square rigging grid above the stage to hand scenery, drapes and additional lighting, permanent microphone points either side of stage patched to the lighting box, speaker brackets and permanent video camera. Estimated cost for this would be around £10,000 to £15,000.