Jackie Slade is a senior-level event professional and is highly-skilled in site operations and production, site design, overlay and site management, and logistical, technical and creative areas of event operations and delivery. With extensive experience managing and delivering sites for complex, large-scale festivals and sporting events with 200,000+ capacity and multipurpose event programmes.

Most recently as overlay manager at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, for the Smithfield venue in the centre of Birmingham, a large outdoor site hosting two large temporary seating bowls for 3×3 Basketball, Beach Volleyball, and a free public festival site. Taking ownership of the design and delivery of this complex venue, starting with the demolition of two multi-storey car parks and an office building, major groundworks and overseeing the build of all infrastructure on this completely empty old market site.

Prior to Jackie’s Birmingham 2022 role, she worked as site manager/site designer at Glastonbury Festival for more than 15 years. She held a senior role in the operations team, liaising with key stakeholders; operational and creative, taking an overview of the entire site.  Evaluating infrastructure and creative elements’ positioning to ensure area site plans worked operationally, considering crowd movements, vehicle access, sightlines, noise and aesthetics, accounting for relationships with surrounding elements, public spaces, the wider perspective of the whole site and a general ‘feel’ of the festival ultimately, for the customer.

Jackie has trained and holds certificates in AutoCAD, NEBOSH certificate, Mental Health First Aid, Crowd Dynamics, Crowd Safety and Risk Analysis, Public Safety at Festivals and Mass Gatherings.