Three Steps to a Smooth Audio Installation:
Here’s how Bravo Events approached a project in a school chapel ahead of the September 2025 academic year.
1. Understand Your Client’s Needs
Schools make up a big part of the business for Bravo Events, a company focusing on lighting, sound, and audio-visual solutions in England’s south west. They’ve been the AV contractors for Wellington School, an independent day and boarding school in rural Somerset, since 2000, charged with selecting and setting up technical kit at its A game, designed for longevity and with minimum impact to the academic surroundings.
Across the campus, a lot of the rooms and lecture halls were furnished with poorly installed speakers that were simply not powerful enough for the size of the spaces they inhabited. They’d been overdriven by amplifiers (staff and students didn’t necessarily know how to operate them) and the drivers had blown. The over-arching ambition was to attain superior sound coverage with systems that could guarantee reliability, ease of use, and aesthetic integration into the school’s medley of areas.
2. Consistency is Key
Rolling out the kit, little by little, the school’s chapel was the most recent space to be transformed. Bravo Events deliberately singled out the same equipment they had installed in the school’s ARC conference room and the drama studio: EVID speakers, Denon rack mixers, Crown XLS power amplifiers, and the G4 300 Series of handheld mics.
Following the path they had already walked ensured unity. If staff or students moved from one space to another, they would then be familiar and comfortable with the kit. ‘With all the racks looking pretty much identical, the idea was that anyone could go into any of the rooms, turn on the amplifiers or the rack, connect to Bluetooth or other media, and grab a mic for anything from a sermon in the chapel to a lecture in the science room,’ explains Bravo Events Managing Director Isaac Cowlard.
3. Make Smart Audio Choices
The chapel had a 6-zone mixer-amplifier that only worked on two channels, plus speakers positioned down each wall. To replace them, Isaac recommended Crown’s XLS 1002 DriveCore 2 Power Amp and EVID 6.2s as speakers that would suit the aesthetics of the chapel, a Grade II listed venue with a highly decorative ceiling, carved wooden wall panels, and a signature bright blue floor.
The white EVIDs look cool,’ he says. ‘Their shape and colour allow them to blend into the space. Most of the chapel is a coffee-white colour, close to magnolia, so we made wooden speaker stands (we weren’t allowed to put the speakers directly on the walls), painted them the same colour, and anchored them into the molding.’
He adds: ‘It’s quite a narrow room so we worked out that four EVIDs would cover the space and give enough directional coverage to get the most out of anyone wearing a lapel mic. The school already owned wireless G4 and we were able to get it so the chaplain could simply grab a mic, clip on a bodypack and walk pretty much anywhere within the chapel and people would be able to hear him without any horrendous feedback issues.’
About Bravo Events
Isaac Cowlard has a background in technical theatre, working at Taunton Brewhouse and the Princess Theatre in Burnham-on-Sea before becoming a freelance technician. His business partner, Stuart Comley, is also an experienced technician with a passion for supporting the arts. Together, they founded Bravo Events in 2015 and have developed a niche in AV for schools and education.
‘A lot of the schools that we look after used to have performing arts technicians. However, budgets have changed so those roles no longer exist and no one is really looking after the kit or caring about it enough to push for upgrades. That’s where we come in. We offer support as a tech team, not only managing installs but going on site to orchestrate shows and working with students to give them the industry experience to hopefully get involved and learn on the job. We know a 15-year-old, for example, who has already used the Augment3d toolkit for Eos and prepared a whole lighting plot, and another student has gone on to work for ChamSys. Schools are supporting this.’
Adding Drama, But Without the Drama
Bravo Events are also the technical contractors for the Princess Theatre. A performing arts venue in Torquay, it underwent refurbishment in 2021 and there are now plans in the pipeline to install CHAUVET lighting in 2026. ‘They’re budget-friendly and the colour representation is great for the money,’ says Isaac. His plan is to also upgrade from the existing Qu-16 to Allen & Heath’s Qu-7 digital mixer – ‘we need more channels for the show to go on.’
Isaac says that they purchase a lot of their audio gear from Leisuretec: ‘The new website is fantastic. I love the fact that you can have different project lists on the go. It’s incredibly helpful when we’re quoting for so many different venues and disappearing off to council meetings or board meetings. We’re able to save a project list, flip it out, go through the quotes with the client, and swap bits and pieces in and out. Everything arrives the next day if we want it to as well.’
About Leisuretec
Established in 1990, we are Trade Distributors of Professional and Commercial Audio, Lighting, Video, Special Effects and Ancillary. Through our AV Hire Production, AV Installation and Re-seller customers we address the live entertainment, leisure, commercial, residential and retail markets throughout the UK.
We support our trade customers with immense stock holding across a vast choice of products, knowledgeable technical support, competitive trade pricing, speedy delivery and attentive after-sales support.
