The Sacred Heart School, a Catholic primary school located in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, recently took out the honour of being the first school in NSW to complete work funded by the government’s Building the Education Revolution (BER) scheme.
The number of multipurpose halls to be built under the program is in excess of four figures and the opportunity and challenges this presents to the professional sound and lighting contractor are obvious. Fortunately Principal Brian Aulsebrook has a passion for the performing arts and has spent many years overseeing school productions. During that time he noticed that Jands was usually the preferred company for lighting products, design and also advice.
”I’ve known of Jands for ages and they certainly seem to be the industry standard,” commented Mr Auslebrook. “I’ve done many performing arts projects with the Catholic Education Office and Jands gear has always been prevalent. The builder on this project had also used Jands before and so we just went with it – why shop around for anything else?”
Jands supplied and installed the lighting infrastructure for the auditorium including two JLX-PRO modular pre-wired lighting bars and two WMX-A wall mount dimmers. The Jands WMX-A wall mounting dimmer was designed specifically to meet the needs of this style of job and together with the JLX lighting bars and Jands patching system forms part of an integrated and cost effective solution. With its simple menu, enabling access to the configuration and test options, the Jands WMX dimmer is ideal for schools.
The hall’s stage is portable but usually faces west with one JLX-PRO lighting bar accommodating this position. However, if a large production is staged and thus more seating is required the hall’s side wall can open making the venue much larger. Overflow seating is then placed outside and the stage is moved to the southern wall where the other JLX-PRO lighting bar is situated. Around the hall there are multiple points for plugging in the DMX dimmer board.
Stage & Studio supplied a suitable lighting package that included four ETC Source Four lights and a Jands Stage 12 control console, an ideal choice for this project due to its ease of use.
”The amount of fixtures chosen was determined by the amount of light that floods into the hall during the day time,” explained Mr Aulsebrook. “We went with the ETC Source Four’s so that we can attach gobos to them if and when required.
”The lighting system is working beautifully. We recently held a major event for Anzac day and when The Last Post was being played, we dimmed the hall to near darkness and then, when the Reveille was being played we lit up a large Australian flag to great effect.”
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