BRIDGE Project Launch, Canal Court Hotel, Newry
When East Border Region (EBR) marked 50 years of cross-border cooperation, it chose to do it in Newry, the town where its founding councils first met in January 1976. Across two consecutive days at the Canal Court Hotel, EBR hosted its Golden Anniversary Symposium on Thursday 24 September 2026 and the official launch of the BRIDGE Project on Friday 25 September 2026.
AXL Audiovisual delivered the technical production for both, from a single build that carried a formal lunch symposium on day one and a panel-led project launch on day two. Each event drew between 100 and 200 guests from councils, government and partner organisations on both sides of the border.
The brief: two different events, one ballroom
The two days asked different things of the room.
The 50th Anniversary Symposium was a seated lunch format, with round tables filling the ballroom and a programme of speeches tracing EBR's history from 1976 to 2026. It opened with a welcome address from Cllr PJ O'Hanlon, Chairman of East Border Region, and ran through an extended historical presentation of close to 70 slides, archive photographs included.
The BRIDGE Project launch was a conference-style event led by Master of Ceremonies Pamela Arthurs, CEO of East Border Region, with a lectern address and a four-seat panel on stage. BRIDGE (Building Resilient Institutions for Development, Governance and Engagement) is a €1.34 million PEACEPLUS project led by EBR in partnership with the Irish Central Border Area Network (ICBAN), focused on leadership, governance and institutional capacity across border local authorities. PEACEPLUS is managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB).
Both events needed to look polished for a public-sector audience, carry multiple funder and council logos clearly, and run to time with no visible technical hand-offs.
A 6m LED video wall in a chandelier ballroom
The centrepiece was a 6m x 2.5m LED video wall at 2.9mm pixel pitch, ground-stacked on a raised deck behind the stage. At that pitch, fine detail such as the council crests, PEACEPLUS co-funding marks and the Shared Island and Government of Ireland logos stayed sharp even for the front tables.
Ground stacking kept the wall clear of the ballroom's ceiling and its crystal chandeliers, with no rigging required. The wall was fed through an LED processor and a Roland V-8HD vision mixer, giving the operator clean switching between presentation sources, holding slides and branded backgrounds.
The wide aspect of the wall let EBR run a branded frame around every slide: event title across the top, 50th anniversary marks on each side, and partner logos along the base. Presentations sat inside that frame, so the branding never dropped out between speakers.
Show control and presenter support
With a long, image-heavy history deck on Thursday and several speakers on Friday, presenter confidence mattered as much as picture quality.
Interspace Industries MicroCue3 wireless slide control, with two handsets configured, so presenters advanced their own slides from the lectern without cueing the operator
A 40" presenter comfort monitor set on the floor downstage, dressed in a black fabric surround to keep it discreet from the audience
Dedicated presentation laptops at front of house, with presenter view running for the operator
Long-run fibre HDMI between the stage and the control position
Audio for speeches, panel and lunch service
Speech intelligibility over a full lunch service is the core audio challenge in a hotel ballroom. AXL ran a Yamaha DM3 digital mixing console at front of house, feeding four powered 12-inch loudspeakers on stands positioned to cover every table without over-driving the front rows.
Microphone coverage included:
A gooseneck lectern microphone on a black tempered-glass lectern
Sennheiser wireless handheld microphones for the panel and audience Q&A
Sennheiser wireless lavallier microphones for presenters who needed to move
Staging and lighting
LED profile spotlights provided a focused key light on the lectern, so speakers read well to the room and in photography against a bright LED background. A 6×1m riser at 600mm height raised the LED wall above the stage.
One build, two events
Rather than strip and rebuild between days, AXL installed once and turned the room around overnight. Content, stage furniture and microphone plots were switched from the anniversary symposium to the BRIDGE launch, with the LED wall, audio system and show control staying in place. For EBR, that meant lower cost, less disruption for the hotel, and a technical setup that was already proven in the room before the second event began.
A returning client
This was not AXL's first event with East Border Region. We previously delivered production for the East Border Region AGM in December 2025, and we look forward to supporting EBR's 50th anniversary programme further, including the Association of European Border Regions Annual Conference later this year.
FAQ
Can one AV setup serve two different events on consecutive days? Yes. For East Border Region at Canal Court Hotel, AXL built once and reset content, stage furniture and microphones overnight, taking the room from a seated lunch symposium to a panel-led project launch without a second build.
What size LED screen suits a hotel ballroom conference in Northern Ireland? For 100 to 200 guests in a ballroom like Canal Court Hotel's, a 6m x 2.5m LED wall at 2.9mm pitch gives a wide branded canvas that stays sharp for the front tables and readable from the back of the room.
Does AXL work on PEACEPLUS and public-sector events? Yes. AXL supports councils and cross-border bodies across Northern Ireland and Ireland, including East Border Region's AGM, 50th anniversary symposium and BRIDGE Project launch.
Related links
Planning a conference, launch or anniversary event in Newry, Belfast or anywhere in Ireland?
Talk to AXL about the full production, from LED video walls to audio and show control.
