Coronation Street Live

The Challenge

The brief was to convert a large part of the ITV car park in Manchester into a dining room large enough to house a huge scale industrial kitchen and space for 400 additional cast and crew to sit and dine. On the evening of the live episode to convert this space in 1 hour into a huge after show party zone for all the cast and crew with numbers totaling in excess of 600.

The Dining Solution

We set about creating our huge dining room, with a load list that included:

• 6 tonnes of flooring
• 6 tonnes of marquee frame
• 25 tonnes of ballast (we had better stop the thing blowing away!)
• 600 square metres of carpet (all recyclied to one of our charities afterwards)
• 40 tables
• 400 white bistro chairs
• 3 Chesterfield sofa sets (air filled)
• Lighting
• Changing room
• 600kg LPG for the heating
• Several door sets

Conversion to Party Zone

The plan: Dining was due to finish at 6.30pm (but ran a little behind) the Live being at 7.30pm with no noise permitted on site and the party following the Live episode immediately after at 8.30pm.

So we had all the lads in place early, itching to steal everyone’s chair whether they were actually reaching for the salt or leaving, they soon found their chair had vanished!

Concurrently the other team installed the stage and dance floor BANG the hour was gone – quick grab a seat and watch the Live, actually live.