A Festival in Five Languages…
The annual Shinnyo Village Festival is a highly anticipated event for Shinnyo Buddhism practitioners from across Europe and Japan. The festival is hosted by different temples each year, and this year, it was the turn of the UK Temple to hold this two-day celebration. The guest of honour was the current head of the order, Her Holiness Shinso Ito.
For such an important and high profile event, the festival organisers needed a proven event production partner. Thanks to our work on past Shinnyo-en Temple events and a strong relationship built over four years, they appointed Clownfish Events to deliver a joyous occasion with a genuine festival feel.
Facts & Figures
10 marquees
1500 wireless headsets
5 language channels
29 LED screens
1 custom-built staircase
2 festival stages
0.5km of festoon lighting
The brief
Clownfish has worked with the Shinnyo-en UK Temple before (check out last year’s atmospheric Lantern Floating Festival), so it was great to be trusted by the community there to deliver such a significant event as the Village Festival.
Our instructions, in short, were to organise everything – from conference marquees, staging and sound; to catering and water fountains; to toilets, waste and security. By the time the Temple opened the gates to its VIP guests, the Clownfish team had constructed an entire festival village.
On site
This two-day event involved a packed schedule of conferences, seminars and workshops led by leading practitioners of Shinnyo Buddism.
We erected ten marquees (including a 4k cinema marquee and a kids’ marquee on astroturf) and rigged them up with staging, custom backdrops, audio-visuals, lighting and cooling fans. LED screens relayed live footage across the festival site, and each of the 1500 guests was supplied with a wireless headset that allowed them to select real-time translation into one of five languages.
As with any event management project on this scale, event manager Ali Toyn started with detailed CAD drawings. This helped the team to get a feel for the space and decide on the ideal screen set-up in advance, so that installation on the day ran without a hitch.
As with any event management project on this scale, event manager Ali Toyn started with detailed CAD drawings. This helped the team to get a feel for the space and decide on the ideal screen set-up in advance, so that installation on the day ran without a hitch.
Unique considerations
Her Holiness Shinso Ito is the highest-ranking priest in the Shinnyo Buddhism faith; so welcoming her to this event was a great honour for the organisers. We worked closely with our client to ensure that everything was carefully planned; we even built a custom staircase to ensure that she could get to and from the stage safely.
A beginner’s guide to lantern floating
Lantern Floating is a ceremony originating in the ancient Japanese Buddhist custom of remembering friends and loved ones who have passed away.
The ritual is conducted in accordance with traditional esoteric Buddhist rites, incorporating the elements of Fire and Water. It creates an inclusive space where many can gather and pause for a moment – recalling all that is good around us – and feel a sense of gratitude for the past, appreciation for the present and a sense of hope and togetherness towards the future.
Whether yours is a village fete or a global gathering, we’ll make it happen.
Our box of tricks
Three 60-kVA generators to power the entire festival site.
Wireless headphones with the option to translate live content from Japanese into a choice of five languages.
Atmospheric lighting to transform the temple and gardens after dark and illuminate pathways
