The 25th anniversary of Liverpool's annual Mersey River Festival this year was organised for the first time by the new events team from Liverpool Culture Company.

Lee Forde, the company's General Manager of Events, says: “It was the 25th anniversary, 2005 is the 'Year of the Sea' and we wanted to refresh and revamp the event, make it more contemporary and broaden its appeal to a wider public than the traditional River Festival audience. We also wanted to increase the physical area”.

As a result, the Festival - free to the public and staged in and around Liverpool's Waterfront - is reported to have attracted more people, interest and interactive participation than ever before.

A wide range of technical and other equipment was used in the creation of the Festival, not least being the 12 x 13 metre Alpha stage. Provided by Essex-based SRC, it was located at the Pier Head in front of the City's renowned 'Three Graces' and alongside the Mersey.

Manchester-based sound and lighting rental company Audile supplied sound and lighting for the stage, the system consisting of 12 stacks of Funktion One Resolution 5 PA, driven by XTA processors and powered by QSC amps. The monitor system featured Turbosound TFM450 wedges onstage and a Soundcraft MH4 console.

Also supplied were a variety of microphones, including Sennheiser radios, Shure, Beyer, AKG and Audio Technica's, with mixing via a Soundcraft MH3 console.

The full moving onstage light rig - controlled with an Avolites Azure 2000 console - included High End Studio Beam PCs and Martin Mac 500 profile moving lights, plus an assortment of PARs, ARRI 2K fresnels, Source Four 15 - 30 profiles for key lighting, plus smoke and hazers.

Audile also architecturally lit a selection of boats in Canning Dock, using Studio Due 2.5K City Colors, Mini City's and 400 Watt HQI fixtures with blue lamps, all of which was run off an Avo Pearl in a dockside Portacabin.

Large format projection was supplied by local company Blueway, using two Pani PB6 6Kw machines with AMD-32 slide changers to beam giant images onto the George's Dock Building and onto the Canning Dock side of the Maritime Museum.

Artwork was a selection of Liverpool Capital of Culture sponsors' logos on George's Dock. Onto the Maritime Museum, it was a series of specially created photo montages made from old Cunard posters dating back to the 1920's and 30's, the heyday of Liverpool's cruise liner industry.

With Liverpool being the European Capital of Culture 2008, the Liverpool Culture Company is the organisation set up to deliver the culture programme for the city up to and beyond 2008.