Summer 2011

It has been an incredibly busy summer this year with a very full calender of concerts, festivals and celebrations. The summer season commenced with a large pyromuiscal display at St Johns College Cambridge to help them celebrate their 500th anniversary. This is one of the most prestigious may ball events of all the Cambridge colleges and the display needed to be even more spectacular to help the College mark this milestone anniversary.


As the summer season progressed our teams of technicians travelled the length and breadth of the country firing a wide range of displays which included Concerts in the Park, festivals and regattas, weddings and celebrations culminating in a number of large prestigious events to end the 2011 summer season.

Kimbolton Fireworks were asked to provide stage pyrotechnics, flames, confetti and a spectacular firework finale to round off the end of the BBC Proms season with two nights of displays in London's Hyde Park. On Saturday night the end of season proms consist of the traditional concert in the Royal Albert Hall, while the Hyde Park audience were treated to artists which included, Katherine Jenkins, Russell Watson and of course Rolf Harris, all hosted by Sir Terry Wogan. The finale of the Proms is broadcast live on BBC1 and we counted down the moment to end of the National Anthem, which was our cue to fire the spectacular pyrotechnic and firework finale.


On the Sunday, the stage is re set for the BBC Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park Concert, a festival in a day, where artists such as Will Young, James Blunt, Lenny Kravitz and Chic performed with a finale provided by Gary Barlow. For the second nights performance our crews worked through the night to rig the stage pyro from the roof and above the two giant video walls, and to the rear of the stage another aerial firework finale was being prepared.

At the opposite end of the country our teams were preparing and assisting the invited international companies to fire the World Firework Championships in Blackpool. This year we had teams from Canada, Germany and Australia. The final display is a non competing exhibition display fired by Kimbolton Fireworks. After a series of four displays fired from North Pier the winners were announced as Foti International from Australia, congratulations Robert and Forch.

The summer was drawn to a close with a significant celebration at the docks of Felixstowe Port, with the formal opening of Berth 8 and 9 which was performed by HRH The Princess Royal. The Port of Felixstowe opened two new deep water berths with seven state of the art cranes which were the first stage of a £1b expansion of the Port capable of handling the worlds largest container ships, the grand opening of these berths also coincided with the 125th anniversary of the Port, a good reason to celebrate.

Kimbolton Fireworks were asked to provide three events on behalf of the Port to assist in the days celebrations. The first was a daylight performance of smoke, pyrotechnics, flame projectors, special effects and daylight fireworks. A group of 250 VIPs were treated to a multi media performance to celebrate the opening of berths 8 & 9. Live performers, container trucks and sea containers all formed part of the performance which was punctuated with special effects and pyrotechnics synchronised to a specially commissioned sound track.

In the evening the VIPs were treated to a celebratory dinner which was rounded off with a spectacular firework display form the port. Meanwhile the Port wanted to extend the celebrations to the town itself and with a number of events organised on the sea front, we rounded of the evenings entertainment with a spectacular display fired form the Pier. With the summer season now over it is full steam ahead for the busiest time of year, November 5th.