Courts of Rayleigh are up for an international music award!!!

We bet that headline got your attention! Ok, to be a little more specific our client, female indie artist, Beabadoobee is up for an international music award for her debut album Fake it Flowers. We were involved as we were commissioned to create a huge floral installation for her debut album performance last autumn.

Who is the singer known as Beabadoobee?

London based, Beatrice Kristi, 21, is an emerging Filipino-British singer-songwriter with a growing international fan base. Known for her indie rock style, she was due to undertake a world tour in 2020 before it was cancelled due to Covid-19. As a result, her record company, Dirty Hit Records created a streamed performance opportunity on You Tube. Available to ticket holders only, it was live steamed to thousands of fans worldwide. It is this performance that is up for Best Streamed Performance and Video at the Ami Music Awards.

Read on for more information about the awards later in the blog.

How did Courts get involved?

Our involvement came about, totally unexpectedly, after we were contacted by Tommy Davis, the video director, who also happens to be my nephew. We have done some big floral creations before but never a floral installation and nothing like this either in terms of scale or reach. The idea of having our work being streamed world-wide was so exciting but also incredibly daunting.

Unsurprisingly, it took me only a few seconds to say yes.

It was only afterwards that I considered whether we would even have enough staff, funds and time as it would be a tight turn around and the shop had to remain open and trading throughout.

The event was booked to take place in the autumn, but the date was changed a few times as the crew recced different sites. Finally, we had a confirmed date. Performance day was to be October 1st 2020.

I think I could have been forgiven for panicking at this point, as it gave us a time frame of only two weeks to get everything ordered and ready! But we florists are steely determined types, used to stressful situations so of course I simply got on with it.

We had to be incredibly focused and organized as once it was booked everything moved very quickly. We did not have the luxury of any site visits with all the restrictions that were in place, so we relied heavily on drawings along with phone calls, Zoom meetings and lots and lots of planning.

Design

The design itself was put together by Tommy the main director, along with Rob Nicholls, the art director who had seen a similar floral installation created for a music video by a famous Japanese floral designer.

Tommy had originally come to me with the first pre-visual plan, but it was the huge collaboration between everyone: my team from Courts, Tommy, Rob and the wider production team, that helped to create such as amazing piece of floral design. That said we had full creative licence and I worked closely with them, advising what was possible along with what would be the best flowers to use.

How we worked out the number of flowers needed

In total we used a whopping 5000 flowers plus additional green foliage. This was decided by determining how many flowers we needed for a square metre and then multiplying up. The stage was 27sqm and thankfully we got our sums right.

As you can imagine, the bill for the floral installation was quite high, however client confidentiality means we would never divulge the final figure. We are proud that we were able to keep to the budget and even foraged for some of the greenery along with making sure we used reasonably priced flowers.

Preparing for the big day

To enable us to prepare in advance everything was delivered to our shop in Rayleigh, a good 50 miles from the venue; Three Mills Film Studios in East London.

It was then taken to my house, including boards, sundries and greenery. My team worked hard to pre-bundle and bucket everything into 1 sqm meaning we had a total of thirty to maintain and transport the next day. It took a full day and night and overtook the entire downstairs of my house and front drive!

Performance Day: set up and clear down

We loaded a hired Luton van, thankfully it all fitted in, left Rayleigh at 5.30am and started setting up at 7am. Filming was due to start later that day at 2pm so we had to work to a tight schedule. We finished an exhausting six hours later with the main workload achieved in 2.5 hours.

To keep the flowers at their best they were placed in watered oasis designer sheets. Filming took several hours, and once completed we started to dismantle at 8pm finally arriving home at 10pm that night. As all florists know, it is so much quicker to take down that set up a display!

Covid restrictions meant that we had to wear masks and be mindful of self-distancing. We were all tested to be safe but thankfully the country was not in full lock down at this point and the day went ahead without any problems.

My fabulous team

This really was a huge team effort which included:

Russell: My husband who drove the van

Linzi: Courts’ head florist

Ellie and Lucy: Courts’ apprentices

Tommy Davis: Music and Video Director

Rob Nicholls: Art Director and my good friend

Rob advised us on more technical issues such as positioning both in the planning phase and on the day itself. This made sure that we placed things in a way that really worked smoothly with all the different camera angles and planned shots as we had no previous experience of this. He also helped set things out with us which was amazing.

What happened to the flowers?

It would have been heart breaking to waste such beautiful flowers, so we made up bouquets for the band, the crew and everyone else that had helped on the day. The rest we took home to display in the shop window.

A huge image of the floral installation was displayed on a number of billboards to promote the album including both Westfield Shopping Centres in London.

AIM Awards

This year marks the 22nd year of The AIM Awards, which stands for the Annual Indonesian Music Awards. They focus on creativity and innovation and particularly recognise indie artists and record labels. Taking place on August 25th 2021, the music awards will be streamed live to a global audience.

The whole experience was amazing and exhausting but also exhilarating and one that we absolutely loved being involved in. I would definitely like the opportunity to do more floral installations and larger events in the future.

My team likes to think that our flowers really helped Beabadoobee to success as her Fake it Flowers Album featured in the top 10 for over ten weeks and reached top 20 in more than 27 countries, including her first platinum award in USA.

The band were literally blown away when they saw what we had created, which for this florist really was music to my ears. For everyone in the team from Courts who worked on it that day it was so satisfying to see our drawings and sketches come to life.

We love a challenge so if you are questioning or thinking would it even be possible to create the crazy vision you have for an event or occasion, please get in touch. We can help you to make it a reality.

Call 01268 777983 to speak to us direct

Check our website www.courtsofrayleigh.co.uk

Pop into our shop located at 54 Eastwood Road, Rayleigh, Essex. SS6 7JP

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Gillian and the team at Courts.