London Event Productions is a boutique corporate production company born out of a roar of technical expertise and imagination. Turning ten in 2025, they’re marking a decade of triumphant gala dinners and receptions, Marvel, Star Wars and Bridgerton-themed Christmas parties, award shows and movie premiers in prestigious London venues that carry century upon century of pomp and pageantry in their walls.
Sidestepping the mainstream, they’re one of a tiny number of event producers proud to be called a ‘crown supplier’, effectively the steward of all things AV in the Historic Royal Palaces portfolio. The Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, the Serpentine within Kensington Gardens, Banqueting House, and Kew Palace all count as venues they’re credited to work in, as do the likes of the British Museum and the Science Museum.
For events, their kit includes Yamaha’s DM7C and Sennheiser wireless systems deployed in anything-but-ordinary circumstances. Imagine hosting the likes of royalty, The Magic Circle, embassies and leading FTSE 100 companies with sometimes just minutes for an-end-to-end install – certainly not how the vast majority of production companies approach a project.
Royalty, Ambassadors and Celebrities
Talking to London Event Productions Director William Jonkler, it’s evident that he has an enduring love for the industry and an equally heartfelt responsibility to protect and honour some of the nation’s most historic sites. He reflects on how the agency has evolved, and the cutting-edge AV that has provided sturdy roots and the wherewithal to embrace the challenges that invariably come with the territory.
This sector is every single adjective you can imagine. It’s stressful but amazing, it’s exciting, it’s creative and burn-out inducing… You go into these really cool venues, do some architectural lighting and video projection and it’s brilliant, it just comes alive.
The challenges are intense. It isn’t uncommon to be called on to manage a large film premiere in 30 minutes from access to guest arrival, and this often involves numerous audio systems, hundreds of lighting fixtures, staging, branding, set and video equipment. We’ve done film premiers at the British Museum where we’ve had 30 minutes to set up several PAs as well as plinths, floristry and hundreds of lights. The Tower of London is another half-hour install, and you can’t run at any of these venues because you’re surrounded by ancient art or objects!
We can achieve it in that time, building entire gala dinners, awards shows, drinks receptions or brand events, partly because of the top-of-the-range kit (and a lot of spares) we own and the way in which we build everything for speed and efficiency.
Sennheiser EW-DX
Our Sennheiser equipment, purchased via Leisuretec, is built in situ to a custom modular system. For instance, an eight-channel Sennheiser EW-DX is one module. You slap it down, there’s a patch on the back with power through, it’s all powered together, you use two-way looms to make one connection and all your ins and out are patched from the desk to your racks, your amps, your wireless, everything. It’s a way of deploying an audio front of house and drive rack system in one minute flat.
I’m really impressed with Sennheiser’s digital stuff. We went with EW-D first and then bought 16 channels of EW-DX dual half-rack units and they’re exceptional. The app is unbelievable. The Bluetooth connectivity is really cool, you just press a button and everything is instantly synched. You’ve got great sounding heads for your handhelds, too. We have a range of 945 supercardioid mic capsules and MM 435 cardioid dynamic heads. The gain before feedback is fantastic and they sound great.
The DM7C
We were one of the first companies in the country to buy the DM7C, again through Leisuretec. We then put it in a flight case made by the legendary Polish company Z-Cases. It allows us to deploy the console, a redundant playback rack, wireless networking and patch in about three minutes. You take the lid off, flip it up, stick a Veam connector together, and you’ve got your patch done. It’s like a magic box.
For us, the DM7C’s dual power supply and ability to patch two inputs to one channel is a game-changer. If you’ve got King Charles or the chairman of Santander on stage and something happens to their lapel mike, you have backup with the press of a button. You’re talking about disruption of maybe four seconds instead of three minutes.
British Museum Reading Room Drinks Reception
We had a 90-minute install for a 1970s-themed drinks reception for a CFM defence contractor during Farnborough International Airshow, with a pre-rig the night before due to the sheer scale of the event. It was dress to impress and we provided everything – furniture, branding, arcade machines, scenic flats, video projection, lighting design, and staging.
We are the only company, certainly that I know of, in the world that has a white d&b V-Series in-house that we bought specifically for this venue. The Reading Room’s Great Court is big and echoey with a curved glass ceiling and marble and stone walls and floors, making it one of the most acoustically challenging environments in London, second only to the Raphael Gallery at the V&A (in my view).
This event is a favourite because we got to do an extremely large video, a six-projector blend, that required 6x 30,000 lumen projectors built on custom towers to create the entire round reading room as a screen with custom content. It was logistically challenging but the end result was really impressive, especially our in-house 3D previs going from a wireframe to a rendered visualisation.
Tower of London Christmas Concert
Taylor Swift’s drummer and a suite of similar heavyweight musicians were flown in from around the world for the only known concert in the Tower’s 1,000-year history. Incredibly challenging, we had 30 minutes to drive our vans across the drawbridge to the White Tower, decant everything up four flights of stairs, set up a concert and dinner for 90 senior executives, bring any empties back down, and be off-site. During this time, we built a stage and PA in nine minutes, backline followed, before we handed over to the touring sound engineer to sound check. For this, we used our tried-and-true DM7C and d&b sound system (normally we would also use Sennheiser in-ears but they insisted on wedges).
Remarkable Events In Remarkable Venues
What we’re doing at London Event Productions is not reinventing the wheel technically. The AV side of the business is fairly straightforward. Creatively and logistically, however, it’s very bespoke. We have to exceed expectations while operating around the country’s most precious artefacts with very tight time restrictions, rules and often demanding clients, sometimes with event spends that exceed £1 million. It’s a privileged position to be in and only doable because of the top-of-the-range kit built in prep in such a way that it can be set up in minimal time, not to mention the world-class freelancers who bring it all together for us.
We own almost all of our equipment for quality and cost control and also operate a modest wood/metal fabrication workshop. Everything is bought specifically for our heritage clients. Most of it is sourced from Leisuretec for who I’ve got a lot of love and a really great and long relationship. Their aftercare support is second to no one else too with a really good system in place for returns and repairs.
London Event Production’s Event Stock:
- Astera AX9, pixel brick, AX1
- LumenRadio Stardust and Lunas
- 16x EW-DX
- EW-DX Body Packs, handhelds and wireless XLR transmitters
- CHAUVET Ovation Reve IP and R2X Spots
- Encore LB15 IP, part of ADJ’s Lime LED Series
- White pinspot banks
- Bespoke DJ booths
- d&b audiotechnik T-Series and V-Series
- SOWA Live 6
- Panasonic REZ15s
- Blackmagic 4K Portable Production Unit
- Various Samsung 4K displays
- Bespoke wireless table lamps and stem spots
- Scenic and staging
Considering the switch to digital?
If you’re looking to make the switch from analogue to digital wireless or upgrade your digital mixer stock, call our experts on 01525 850085 so we can help find a solution that meets both your specification and budget.
About London Event Productions
London Event Productions specialise in designing and producing creative and high-profile events with technical expertise. A dedicated team of event professionals offer full-service production in historic royal palaces, museums and cultural attractions in and around London.
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.
