Robe Gear at Neushoom, Busy Netherlands Venue Neushoorn, Dutch for "rhinoceros," is a busy music venue in the heart of Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, complete with two halls, a cafe area also used as a performance space, rehearsal rooms, and studios, as well as and strong educational ties with local vocational college, Firda, which focuses on music, drama, theatre and the arts, running both technical and creative courses. The venue received a tranche of funding at the end of 2023 to upgrade its technical infrastructure, which has included purchasing a bunch of new Robe LED fixtures that are primarily rigged in the main hall, including 22 PAINTES, 12 LEDBeam 350s, four LEDBeam 350 FW (Fresnel wash, for smoother edges and enhanced color homogenization), six Spiiders, eight TetraXs, and 16 LEDBeam 150s. These were delivered during 2024 by Robe's Benelux distributor, Controllux. The fixtures were on a list compiled by technical consultant and lighting designer Sebastiaan Groen (also a former employee), Neushoorn's head of lighting Jorden Boersma, and their overall head of technical, Michiel Cornelisse. The venue was a new build in 2015. Groen started as an intern in 2016 and was Neushoorn's first full-time technician until 2019, when he left for a freelance career, returning in 2024 to oversee the upgrade together with Jorden Boersma, who started in 2024. Cornelisse joined the team in 2023, just as the funding was coming onstream, for which he coordinated and oversaw the budgeting. He was already familiar with the needs of the venue, being a professional sound engineer and through his connection as the principal sound engineering teacher at Firda. He asked many pertinent questions relating to the best options for bringing lights in line with shows coming through and what would work best for teaching the students. The venue's two halls are The Grote Zaal (Main Hall) with a capacity of 750, and the Small Hall, which can host around 350 people depending on the configuration. The cafe can further accommodate 150 people. These spaces often run simultaneously, producing over 500 unique shows and events a year. Additionally, Firda uses the venue for teaching assorted course modules and for their own productions. When it came to the crunch decision-making about which new lights to get to best fulfil their needs, Robe was "an easy choice," Groen says. Neushoorn previously had an installation of Robe's first-generation DL Series LED theatrical luminaires with 17 DL4X units, which arrived in 2016. These fixtures are still going and have been moved to the Small Hall. "PAINTES were absolutely perfect -- made for a venue like this -- small, punchy, and fast," Cornelisse says. The team visited some other venues around the Netherlands, which had recently invested in new Robe technology to complete their research and gather some firsthand opinions on how well the gear was working in situ. Most of the new lights are rigged in the main hall, including a floor package comprising Spiiders, Tetras, and four PAINTES. The sound system is by Funktion One. The Small Hall has been nicely revamped with the 17 DLX Spots, four of which are in the floor package, together with the same quantity of new LEDBeam 150s. Boersma mentions that the new lighting rig makes tech'ing and lighting shows seriously easier, quicker, and more efficient, as well as enabling more creative and intricate designs to be realised for productions and presentations. Lighting control in the main hall is an Avolites Arena console, with a T3 for the area running the latest Titan Mobile software. Boersma will typically light around 50% of the shows coming through, and the rest will bring their own LDs or operators. He observes that Avo and Robe work extremely well together, a trend that is set to develop and further synergise with the 2023 acquisition of Avolites by Robe. 
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