Every year, music fans make their way to Montreal, Quebec for the annual OSHEAGA Music and Arts Festival featuring performances from some of the biggest names in music today. An ever-growing event since its beginnings, this multi-day indie music festival attracts over a hundred thousand music lovers and tourists every summer at Parc Jean-Drapeau, just off Montreal's southeast tip. The event takes place on six stages with various audience capacities. Osheaga showcases local and emerging artists, who share the bill with some of today’s biggest international stars. The impressive lineup for this year’s 13th edition of the festival included Arctic Monkeys, Florence and the Machine, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The National, Blondie, and many more.
This year, Beats 1 , a 24/7 music radio station owned and operated by Apple and accessible through iTunes and Apple Music, provided coverage of the Osheaga Music and Arts Festival for auditors around the world to enjoy. UK-based anchor, Matt Wilkinson, spent three days interviewing some of the biggest artists at the show including Artic Monkeys, Billie Eilish, Calpurnia The Band, Chromeo, Cuco, Dysn, Khalid and many more.
For this event, Steel Space Concepts created a sleek lounge area using a modified shipping container. The space was used to interview various artists during the event.
As you may have noticed, converted shipping containers have become an essential part of the festival scene (see example). These units are cost-effective, trendy and innovative. The shipping container trend is often associated to the widespread fascination with industrial design and architecture. This style juxtaposes the raw with the refined, the sleek and modern with the vintage and classic, just like Osheaga features emerging local artists along famous world-renowned stars. By using converted shipping containers for their lounge area, this modern industrial look fitted with the festival artists’ styles, genres and cultures.
In addition, converted containers constitute a fantastic marketing tool to get noticed and get potential clients talking about a brand. Beat 1 took advantage of the festival’s high traffic volume (over 135 000 visitors in 3 days!) to promote their radio station locally. Modified shipping containers offer unique flexibility and polyvalence for experiential marketing campaigns since their design can be adapted to specific clients’ needs and can be used at various types of locations. The units provide flexibility on location and can be easily and strategically positioned in high traffic areas such as festivals.