Behind the scenes at CubaDuba Festival
For those who have experienced Wellington’s CubaDupa, you’ve likely wondered how the sheer scale of the festival programme can be brought to life. Festival director Drew James takes us behind the scenes to show what’s involved.
CubaDupa is an extraordinarily complex event to plan and manage. Transforming bustling streets in the centre of Wellington into a festival site is not without its fair share of challenges.
Logistics and production play a huge part in making CubaDupa work. The festival features more than 250 performances and parades every year, with an estimated 100,000-plus attendees over the weekend, and 18 hours of programmed entertainment.
CubaDupa transforms the streets into pedestrian zones from Wakefield St right through to Karo Drive, including all the cross streets, other than Vivian St (SH1). With hundreds of existing businesses, thousands of residents, and 14 road closure points, the CubaDupa site is totally unique to any other event site in Aotearoa.
Hours of consultation and planning go into building site maps, securing road closure points, liaising with suppliers, and creating comprehensive health and safety plans for all staff and contractors involved over the weekend.
Alongside ensuring that the streets are safe and easy to navigate, we transform the look of the streets to create a new theme every year. This year we will suspend more than 500 metres of decoration, including large-scale flower works by artist Jenna Winterton, which have been specially designed and created to reflect the theme of the 2024 festival: Find Your Wild.
The installation points and schedule are carefully mapped out to achieve installation within a small window of time between road closures and the public arriving. Work typically starts at 5am on Saturday morning, so that when Wellington wakes up and ventures into the festival site, the streets are fully transformed.
In addition to more than 20 venues run by local hospitality venues, CubaDupa programmes three large outdoor stages each requiring staging builds, lighting and sound systems, one with additional audio-visual elements and one with a live stream. With only two days for all setups, each stage takes about 30 hours to build, working with multiple independent companies, brought together to work as one team under the overall direction of the CubaDupa Production Manager.
The total crew on site number over 100, with riggers, stage managers, parade marshals, lighting, sound and AV technicians, and site managers..
Each stage has a setup crew, a technical team and a stage manager to coordinate every artist and keep them on time for some very tight turnarounds between performances. Often the sound crews only have a maximum 30 minutes to change an act and install the next, whilst needing to make sure the artist sounds perfect from the get-go. Not an easy task.
As well as the stages there are multiple parades, roaming acts, large-scale street performances, plus three mobile sound systems each with technical support and a stage manager to keep everything on the move. Hundreds of hours are spent planning and sifting through every technical rider which accompanies each act to ensure the performers have everything they need, and are perfectly timed for when they walk out onto the stage or around the streets.
Heading the operations team for CubaDupa are the highly experienced Barrie Hutton (Production), Cathy Knowsley (Operations) and Danielle Burns (Logistics).
Our operations team works closely with numerous key players to ensure the site is ready and safe for all festivities. This includes Fulton Hogan traffic management, Nonstop Solutions waste management, Prestige Loos sanitation, Wellington City Council, NZ Police, Wellington Free Ambulance, Fire & Emergency, Māori Wardens, Pasifika Patrol, Cyberdyne security and the hundreds of businesses and residents that are at the heart of the festival site.
Up to 80 volunteers help boost the numbers on site with roles that support the operations of waste management, parade and roving act marshals, information booths and artist minders.
The festival simply couldn’t happen without the generosity and support of so many local businesses who gear up to supply the large crowds, and residents who allow us access to their property and utilities, and restrict vehicle movements.
So, when you are “Finding Your Wild” on March 23-24 March this year, raise your CubaDupa cup to the huge team of hi-vis adorned workers and volunteers who make sure that everything runs to time and keeps you safe as you immerse yourself in the extraordinary experience of CubaDupa.