Entry Log 013

Before Terra Nueva

It Turns Out None of This Started with COVID

Written by Captain Scott Woldian

I've been looking backwards. Which is perhaps an odd thing to do when we're spending so much time talking about the future. But something wasn't quite adding up. Over the last few Entry Logs, we've talked about livestreaming, virtual venues, digital twins, technology, touring, Dundee, research and the beginnings of the Triple Live Experience. COVID has featured quite heavily too. Understandably. That's when touring stopped, and some of the ideas that eventually became Terra Nueva really started moving.

Except...that's not actually where this story begins.

Not even close.

To understand why Terra Nueva has become this slightly unusual collision of touring, architecture, logistics, technology, film, production, digital worlds and live entertainment, we need to go back considerably further.

And that means talking about Stu.

There wasn't a masterplan

Stu left school with virtually nothing. No qualifications worth talking about. No great career ambition. No idea what he wanted to do. And a serious nervous stutter. That last part matters. Not because I'm about to turn this into an inspirational tale about overcoming adversity. I'm not. It matters because so much of Stu's eventual working life would depend upon something he found incredibly difficult as a young man: communication.

Artists, Crews, Promoters, Clients, Venues, Suppliers, Negotiations, Business development, Tour management, Relationships built around the world. Quite a direction for somebody who once struggled simply to get the words out.

But none of that was apparent at the time.

Stu started his working life counting lampposts for the local authority. Yes. Actual lampposts. Every great adventure has to start somewhere. Some apparently start underneath street lighting. His grandmother eventually decided intervention was required. She tried to get him a job where she and his Mum had worked at GCHQ in Cheltenham. A proper career. Secure. Respectable. Mysterious. Stu's reaction? Absolute dread. Whatever his future was going to be, apparently that wasn't it. So another door opened. And behind that one was architecture.

Enter Chris

Stu found his way into a local architectural practice and began training as an architectural technician. He was around seventeen. And that's where he met Paul Karlsson, “Ted” O’Neill and Chris Margenout. Chris was an architect and one of the people responsible for training him. Stu still regards both Paul and Ted as deeply influential people in his life, and the wise words from Ted still resonate with Stu to this day

However, what started as a professional relationship with Chris across drawing boards became a friendship that has lasted more than four decades. They still speak virtually every day. And today... they're partners in Terra Nueva. The Alchemist strikes an uncanny resemblance to Chris too…funny that!

I find that fascinating. Because when we're looking backwards, there's always a temptation to make life appear beautifully organised. As though every meeting was significant. Every decision deliberate. Every road somehow pointing towards the destination. Life isn't like that. Stu couldn't possibly have known that the architect helping train him would still be part of his life decades later, never mind that they'd eventually find themselves building Terra Nueva together. And Chris would play another rather unexpected role in Stu's story.

Apparently...he changed Stu's understanding of reality. This involves Chris's friend, creative artist Richard Gray. A visit for a cup of tea. Queen's A Kind of Magic album sleeve. And Stu inadvertently painting a green frog on the back of the album artwork. Stu calls it: His Green Frog Moment. I'm not explaining it. Not yet. Some stories deserve room to breathe. And that one deserves an Entry Log of its own.

Then music interfered

Architecture might have become Stu's life. Instead, music kept getting in the way. He performed. He became involved in promoting gigs and festivals. He owned and operated nightclubs. And alongside all of that came something that has remained a constant for decades: Tour Management.

This is important because tour management isn't something Stu discovered later through House of Tours Global. He's been managing tours for bands and artists since those early years. And he's never really left it. If you've never worked on a tour, it's difficult to explain quite what a strange little travelling world it becomes. The audience sees the final two hours. The tour manager sees everything required to make those two hours possible. Artists. Crew. Venues. Promoters. Production. Flights. Hotels. Ground transport. Trucks. Buses. Vans. Freight. Schedules. Budgets. Catering. Merchandise. Local suppliers. Customs. Visas. And the occasional spectacular disaster that nobody saw coming. Or, more accurately, that somebody saw coming and forgot to mention.

When everything works, the audience shouldn't know any of this exists. They walk into a venue. The lights go down. The artist appears. That's the magic. Tour management is partly the art of protecting that magic from everything happening behind it. And Stu has spent a large part of his life doing exactly that.

Seeing the industry from every side

There's another reason those years matter. Stu didn't experience live entertainment from one position. He performed. So he knew the stage. He owned nightclubs. So he knew the venue. He promoted gigs and festivals. So he knew the financial risk of putting the show on. And he managed tours. So he knew the road. Different perspectives on the same industry. Different problems. Different priorities. And sometimes very different ideas about who was supposed to be paying for dinner. Those perspectives become useful later. Because Terra Nueva isn't really trying to solve a single problem. It's looking at an ecosystem. And Stu had spent decades working inside different parts of it.

Then the road became global

Alongside tour management came artist liaison, international entertainment logistics and business development. Stu worked across roles involving All Ways Forward, Rock-it Cargo, EFM, Global Motion and Logicall.

Now the world became bigger. Artists and management teams. International productions. Freight. Airports. Customs. Warehouses. Promoters. Suppliers. Production companies. Equipment moving across borders. Relationships stretching across continents. Business development added another dimension again. It meant listening. Understanding what people actually needed. Building trust. Connecting opportunities. Finding solutions. And learning that something which looks beautifully simple on a spreadsheet can become considerably more entertaining once you introduce airports, customs officials, weather, trucks and human beings. That's the real world. And the real world is rather important when you're eventually going to start building virtual ones.

A few unexpected diversions

Then there was film. Including work around major productions connected with Monty Python, James Bond and Harry Potter.

Different industry? Certainly.

Completely unrelated? Not really.

Specialist crews. Technology. Locations. Production schedules. Budgets. Transport. Logistics. Storytelling. Hundreds of people working behind the scenes so the audience experiences one seamless moment.

Sound familiar?

Then came motorsport. That one initially looked like the oddity. Until I stopped thinking about cars. International movement. Technology. Engineering. Sponsorship. Hospitality. Media. Live audiences. Commercial partnerships. Teams moving from place to place against immovable deadlines. Basically touring...only considerably faster.

Architecture never really left

And then I came back to where we'd started. Architecture. Because architecture isn't simply about drawing buildings. It's about understanding people in spaces. How they arrive. How they move. Where they gather. What they see. How different areas connect. How an environment makes somebody feel.

Fast-forward several decades.

Today we're talking about digital twins, virtual venues and Terra Nueva as a place people can actually enter and explore. The pencil became technology. The physical environment became digital. But some of the questions are remarkably similar. Perhaps architecture wasn't abandoned after all. Perhaps it was simply waiting for the technology to catch up.

House of Tours Global

Eventually, decades of tour management, logistics, production knowledge and international relationships began coming together through House of Tours Global.

House of Tours Global isn't Stu leaving tour management behind. It's what his version of tour management has evolved into. Today he still works within it, increasingly as a consultant — assembling the right people, suppliers, knowledge and infrastructure around artists and touring productions. Tour management. Production. Logistics. Travel. Freight. Personnel. Local knowledge. Global support. Problem solving.

The philosophy is deliberately straightforward: One Call Gets It All.

Not because House of Tours needs to own everything. Quite the opposite. The network is the value. Find the right people. Connect them. Solve the problem. Keep the show moving. That thinking sits underneath Terra Nueva too.

Then the road disappeared

And eventually we arrive at COVID. This is where we've previously tended to begin. Now I realise why that never quite told the whole story. COVID didn't create Terra Nueva. COVID created a situation where decades of experience suddenly had to answer a question nobody had planned for. What happens when touring stops? The road disappeared. Venues closed. Artists couldn't perform. Crews couldn't work. An industry designed around bringing people together suddenly couldn't bring people together. Livestreaming became part of the response. Initially, it was practical.

How do we keep artists performing? How do we keep audiences engaged? How do we create revenue? How do we keep people motivated?

But one question tends to create another. What if an audience doesn't have to be physically inside the venue? What if a performance can reach people anywhere? What if the relationship between an artist and audience can begin before the tour? What if digital experiences can create additional revenue rather than compete with the physical show? What happens when the physical and digital worlds begin working together? Those questions eventually started leading towards what we're now developing through the Triple Live Experience. COVID accelerated the thinking. But it didn't create the experience behind it.

So where did Terra Nueva really come from?

That's what I wanted to understand when I started writing this Entry Log. And I don't think there's one answer. Architecture. Performance. Nightclubs. Promoting. Festivals. Tour management. Artist liaison. International logistics. Business development. Film. Motorsport. House of Tours Global. Individually, they look like different careers. Taken together, certain things keep appearing. People. Places. Movement. Entertainment. Technology. Relationships. Business. And the practical business of turning an idea into something that actually happens.

There was no masterplan. No straight line from counting lampposts to Terra Nueva. And certainly no seventeen-year-old architectural trainee quietly thinking:

"This will all become useful when I build a virtual entertainment world in forty years."

That would be ridiculous. Experience simply accumulated. So did relationships. So did mistakes. So did ideas. And every now and then, something from twenty or thirty years earlier suddenly became relevant again. Perhaps that's why Terra Nueva has become what it has. It wasn't designed by starting with technology and asking what we could do with it. It grew from years spent around real people trying to make real things happen. And that's an important distinction. Because whatever Terra Nueva eventually becomes, it still has to work in that world. It has to help artists. It has to support crews. It has to work with venues. It has to make commercial sense. It has to generate opportunity. And ultimately...it has to help keep the show on the road.

Entry Log 012 was about what we've learned from the testing. Entry Log 013 has taken us backwards to understand where some of the thinking came from. Now we're turning around. Because next time, we're coming straight back to the present. Entry Log 014 — Connecting the Worlds. That's where we start bringing these pieces together through the Triple Live Experience. And that's where things start getting particularly interesting.

As for Chris...Richard Gray...Queen...and that green frog?

You'll have to wait.

I haven't forgotten.

I'm simply enjoying making you wonder.

Captain Scott Woldian
Storyteller and Narrator of the Terra Nueva Entry Logs