As the opening event to Limerick's year as City of Culture a large event was held in Limerick City on New Years Eve 2013. There was a pageant, a fireworks display as well as a concert to ring in the new year.
We'd been talking to the organisers Davis Events in the months and weeks leading up to the event and we came on board to look after Event Safety on behalf of Eamon O'Boyle and Associates.
The pageant and fireworks kicked the whole thing off and attracted thousands and thousands of people to line the streets of the city for the pageant and to gather on the 2 bridges and Clancy Strand to watch the fireworks.
The concert featured a wonderful exclusive performance from Dolores O'Riordan from the Cranberries along with the Irish Chamber Orchestra. Maverick Sabre played, local heroes Leading Armies played, the always-epic Coronas brought us to midnight and then The Strypes rounded things off.
The line-up was immense and, to be fair, the value for money based on the ticket price was super.
The weather even held up mostly, which is amazing for Limerick. The entire day was dry, pretty much, and we only had a couple of light showers later on during the concert.
Mark was down there as Safety Officer and he had Tess with him too. Tess works with us from time to time and has great experience with crowds and events.
A huge New Years Eve event in Limerick city. What's not to like?
Mark was there as Safety Officer for the entire event including the Pageant, Fireworks and the Concert. He went to college in UL back in the day and worked in Limerick for years so you can just imagine how delighted he was to be involved in an event of this size back in Limerick after having left there in 2005.
Tess was down there working with Mark on the safety side of the event too and she was in college in Mary I so she loved going back to be involved in running something like this in the city she studied in.
They both loved going back and genuinely enjoyed being a small part of bringing something that great to a city they both owe plenty to.
Being involved in kicking off Limerick's tenure as City of Culture, even if we had no further involvement in it for the year, was great for Cuckoo and particularly for Mark and Tess.
The challenges with this one were all down to the geography of the event, pretty much.
Looking after the Event Safety for the 3 distinct elements of the event, all of which were at different locations in the city, albeit in fairly close proximity to one another, was challenging. It was a lot of work even for a good two person team.
We were constantly moving around the city checking things and following up on different elements of the build and prep.
It was challenging just staying on top of everything and we were glad to have had such a great team working on every element of the event as it made our jobs that bit more manageable. There really was a great team working on it.