school lighting quotes

[Stuart91]

There's also a valid argument that schools shouldn't complain too much about paying a bit above "rock bottom" prices if they are getting lots of training and support thrown in.

 

I've installed into a couple of schools (the main focus of our work lies elsewhere) and in both cases we provided a significant amount of training which wasn't charged seperately. Whilst I can't support some of the prices the original poster quoted, I don't agree with the idea that schools should always be paying the cheapest price that can be found for an item on the web.

 

If you have a theatre tech or experienced staff who can install, commission, and train on the equipment themselves, then fine, go to a box shifter. But I think it's unfair to look at a price and say "rip-off" without looking at what else is included.

[Bobbsy]

Just a note to add to mac.calder's post: WILL's situation is very much the exception here in the UK too. Having ANY full time theatre technical staff at a school, much less two, is almost unheard of. A short search in the BR for other school-related threads shows that, far to often, the school technical team is purely students with little or no training or supervision from staff (who are almost always more interested in the academic or performance part of drama).

 

It occurs that two full time technicians puts WILL's school ahead of most of the local authority community theatres in this area too!

 

Mac also has it right about "multi use spaces". To get a new "theatre" at my daughter's highschool, they had to justifiy it as a multipurpose room and lecture hall. This meant some unfortunate compromises, such as no wings and very limited changing/make-up facilities.

 

I don't think anybody in this thread has come out with a NO movers in schools post. However, it is fair to say that they are not often the best choice in a typical school with no staff for maintenance and no budget for consumables and spare parts.

 

Bob