Swansea Arena is part of the Copr Bay redevelopment project to revitalise the waterfront area. Glantre were honoured to be awarded a design and build contract under this flagship project to provide stage engineering and theatre fit out packages for a new-build 2,500 seat arena and conference centre complex.

Glantre was contracted by Buckingham Group Contracting and we worked closely with Buckingham, Neill Woodger Acoustics, and operators Ambassador Theatre Group to develop and deliver a superb performance venue with integrated conference facilities.

The stage engineering package includes the provision of a mother truss suspended from a chain hoist system with load monitoring and WiFi reporting. A material hoist was installed to raise equipment to a height of 19m from the auditorium floor to the walk-around technical gallery. Glantre installed an 18m wide  x 12m deep modular rolling stage with 8m x 4m wings, loading ramp, and disabled access lift. When not in use, the stage can be dismantled and stored using a bespoke stacking crane system. The venue also incorporates a motorised 33m room reduction drape system to close off the rear third of the auditorium for smaller shows. The curtain is stored in a tightly-stacked track within the acoustic wall store when not required. A theatrical drapes package (including false-proscenium, legs, borders, cyclorama, gauze, etc) was also supplied. 

The rear of the arena can be shut off with an acoustic wall to create a conference area which includes a 13.5m wide motorised tensioned roller projection screen and a customised modular stage system deployed over the seating rake. 

The theatre lighting system comprises production, work, and house lighting from ETC, along with a High End Systems Road Hog 4-21 control desk, and ETC Unison Paradigm lighting control system. Luminaries are from ETC, and follow spots from Robert Juliat.

The sound system is a high-performance, JBL VTX A8 line-array public address system with B18 subwoofers. The system is powered by Crown amplifiers under network control and a Yamaha QL5 mixer. Swansea Arena often acts as a receiving house, so there is a flexible audio DSP and Dante audio distribution system which is designed so that incoming touring shows can easily interface to the house system. If necessary, the house system can be fully demounted and stored so the touring show can use their own equipment.

Glantre also developed and provided specialist systems for the main arena, including audio/video show relay, paging, intercom, stage manager’s desk, bespoke company switches with remote control, and assistive listening / translation system for up to 800 BYOD users using Sennheiser’s mobile connect system.

Glantre provided custom facility panels, fibre optics network, data networks, outside broadcast facilities power and data connections, and tour bus power and data connections.

In addition to the main auditorium, which can be partitioned off to provide a conference venue and exhibition hall, Glantre also provided a sound system for the VIP lounge, AV systems, room-booking for ten meeting rooms, and a building-wide streaming display screen system showing client-developed content and video/audio show relay.