The Kessel Festival on the Cannstatter Wasen event grounds has been a popular, sustainable music, sports, and cultural festival in the Stuttgart area since 2019 – with its main stage, tent stages, sports and family spaces, as well the “Übermorgen Markt”, a marketplace that focuses on sustainability and the future. Kessel Festival GmbH & Co is the client. From the very beginning, POOLgroup has acted as a partner for the festival, focusing on specialist planning and safety architecture.

The Kessel Festival is designed as a family friendly event: Music, sport, sustainability, family activities and regional cuisine combine to create an open, accessible experience that appeals to a broad audience – from daytime family visitors to evening crowds for headline acts. And the technical systems must be able to cope with this variety of demands without compromising on transparency or operational control.

The combination of wide open spaces, parallel lineups, and sustainability requirements places particular demands on planning and operation:

• several stage performances, sports, and activities happening at the same time,
• an ever changing flow of visitors throughout the day,
• noise and safety requirements in the Neckarpark,
• as well as the need for clearly documented safety, health, and hygiene solutions as the groundwork for obtaining approvals.

For the Kessel Festival, POOLgroup delivers an integrated solution covering technology, planning and safety.

Core services:

• Specialist technical planning of lighting, audio, video, rigging, media technology, IT as well as energy and water supply for the main stage, palace stage, and defined secondary areas.
• Event and ground plans that consolidates stages, activity zones, food service, and route guidance to ensure that lines of sight, sound distribution, and visitor flows work effectively.
• Developing an overarching safety plan including a risk analysis, zoning, emergency routes, capacities, and visitor signage, supplemented by health and hygiene procedures developed with the organizer, authorities, and security contractor.
• Event technology and production with public address systems, lights and rigging, media technology, and logistics management for setup, operation, and changeovers.

For visitors, the Kessel Festival is a clearly arranged, open space with well-defined routes between the stages and the sport, market, and family zones, consistent sound and lighting quality in the relevant zones, and a visible but unobtrusive safety and service presence. Any complexity caused by the technical and safety demands remains backstage with the audience just experiencing a relaxed, well-organized festival weekend.

Since its launch in 2019, the Kessel Festival has become an integral part of the Stuttgart Festival Summer program with steadily growing visitor numbers and a clear-cut profile as a major sustainable event in the region. The collaboration between Kessel Festival GmbH & Co and POOLgroup is built on turning the program and sustainability goals into technical, safety, and operational plans at an early stage. This keeps the festival manageable as it continues to grow