AV Interview: Jack Cornish, Technical Director, Tateside

AV Magazine

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Tateside doesn’t aim to be the biggest integrator, but it would like to be the most respected for quality, care and integrity. Driving this ambition is Jack Cornish who has led the London-based AV consultancy and integrator through record growth, scaling the team to 24 people whilst delivering bespoke solutions for commercial and creative environments.

Cornish’s own career journey reflects deep dedication, not just to his business but to raising industry standards. Numerous testimonials shared with AV Magazine call out not just his technical expertise and forward-thinking innovation, but genuine care for his clients and team.

So what makes Jack tick?

“Culture is everything to us. I used to hire purely on skillset and learned quickly that wasn’t enough. Now it’s about whether we’ll work well together. You spend more time with your colleagues than your family – chemistry matters.”

Musical roots
It’s worth exploring Cornish’s route into the industry. At school, he loved sport and excelled in music, attaining Grade 8 on the clarinet. “Music was a huge part of my life. A lot of my close friends still come from that world. I played with Bromley Youth, toured around Europe, and performed at a pretty high standard.”

At the same time he started to rebel against classical music and fell in love with electronic dance tunes. “I produced music electronically – probably ripping software at the time – and DJing at weekends to make money. From about eighteen to my early twenties, I ran a fairly successful mobile DJ business. This really sparked my interest in loudspeakers, sound systems, and technology, alongside writing and performing music.”

Although university was a logical next step, Cornish was unconvinced. A music technology degree didn’t excite him because a lot of it seemed like things he was already doing. Plus, “I wanted to start earning money.”

Old school opportunity
Then an opportunity came up at his old school which was starting a new music programme, had received a large government grant, needed someone to build a studio and act as a music technician. “I went straight from school into working in a school at around nineteen, with a huge budget and very little idea what I was doing.”

Over four years, he ended up designing studios, technology classrooms, and running the technical side of music education. “I even became an associate music teacher, but I knew teaching wasn’t my long-term career path. I always thought I’d end up working in a studio in Soho – post-production, TV, film, that kind of thing.”

When he did get a job as a runner at a Soho post-production house he only lasted six months. “It was a shock going from a supportive school environment to the reality of the industry – being shouted at, getting people’s lunches – and I realised it wasn’t for me.”

 

Tateside start
At that point in 2008, Jack’s brother-in-law offered Cornish a job at Tateside. Back then, it was a three-person outfit operating out of the Blue Fin Building, Southwark with a major contract supporting publisher – Time Inc.

“We handled infrastructure and meeting room support, and I was thrown into AV fairly quickly. For the first year, I was purely a technician – pulling cables, and doing installs. We learned by saying ‘yes’ and figuring it out afterwards. Trial and error, lots of mistakes, but always making it work.”

The decline of print media – impacting Time Inc’s business – hastened Tateside’s need to diversify. Cornish started doing local outreach, spotting new developments, and chasing opportunities. That led to some lucky breaks. One was landing work at NEO Bankside, a residential development on the South Bank which attracted Cornish “because it felt more accessible. It had Lutron client control, multi-zone audio and TV distribution before smart TVs were mainstream. Every source had to be centralised.”

The second was work for Gordon Ramsay for whom Tateside did repeat business outfitting bespoke restaurants.

Eventually, Tateside moved out of Blue Fin into its own office. “That was a big moment,” he recalls. “Suddenly we weren’t supported by a single contract anymore. We were on our own.”

Today, around 95 per cent of its work is enterprise and corporate. Clients range from global companies seeking enterprise-wide AV strategies to boutique hospitality chains. Recent work includes global partnerships with workplace providers WeWork and Halkin, several new Soho House venues, the new BLOODsports bar in Covent Garden and ongoing AV support for the Haas F1 team.

“Culture is everything to us. I used to hire purely on skillset and learned quickly that wasn’t enough. Now it’s about whether we’ll work well together. You spend more time with your colleagues than your family – chemistry matters.” Jack Cornish

Room to grow
The intense and stressful early days of learning – “Friday nights where nothing works and you fix it under pressure” – has segued into a more measured and mature approach that only comes with experience.

“There’s still room to make mistakes, but within a safety net. Our junior engineers are always paired with senior engineers. Problems escalate through commissioning engineers before landing with senior staff. Manufacturer training has improved massively. Engineers can now go on courses and come back with real skills – but nothing quite replaces real-world pressure. A lab environment isn’t the same as a live site with someone talking in your ear and a handover tomorrow morning,” says Cornish.

Arguably, Cornish’s career mirrors the recent professionalisation of the AV industry. “When I started, I didn’t really know about ISE, InfoComm, or trade bodies like AVIXA and CEDIA. The industry felt fragmented and unprofessional in places. Now there’s far more training, standardisation, and cohesion,” he says.

“Social media has played a big role too — for better and worse. It forces visibility and accountability. Companies have to show their work, their values, and why clients should trust them. It can be toxic, but it’s also accelerated professionalism across the industry.”

Under his leadership, Tateside invests heavily in staff development, from funding certifications to encouraging cross-disciplinary learning, and fostering a culture of curiosity, autonomy and trust. As they grow, preserving this culture is central to the strategic plan.

“We’re lucky to have great staff retention. This Christmas we celebrated two 10-year anniversaries and several five-year ones. We invest heavily in socials – about 24 a year – because we value being together. We also try to keep things fun. Music plays a big role. We’ve hosted club nights in the office, built our own setups – things that reconnect people with why they got into AV in the first place.”

Of Tateside’s 24 staff only three are women. It’s something Cornish is trying to change. “It’s my dream to find a female engineer,” he says.

“We find that a lot of new talent have a passion for music, or DJing and are therefore generally interested in sound. I think we can channel this passion into AV by showing them how what they love translates into the professional and corporate environments.”

Although they habitually outfit meeting rooms for hybrid communication, Cornish sees tremendous advantages in his own staff working in the office.

“My fellow directors and I work five days a week in the office but of course we are flexible. We’re not dinosaurs and we also have families so we recognise there is a balance. But we hope we create a culture where people want to be here. It’s not good enough to come into an office which is used by just a handful of people because when people overhear conversations, jump in, collaborate – that energy is hard to replicate remotely.”

The importance of education
Cornish has also made it a priority that Tateside gives back, whether that’s through pro bono work, donating equipment to underfunded schools, hosting unique AV networking events (such as Lateside nights) or participating in outreach with education charities to demystify AV careers for young people.

Cornish remembers his own early challenges in the industry and is driven to make that path smoother for others.

“The outreach to schools is particularly important because no one really knows what AV is. Most people stumble into it,” he explains. “When I talk to students, I try to show how broad the industry is – from installed AV and live events to museums, immersive tech, content and corporate. It’s not about selling our company. It’s about showing that if you love music, technology, or creativity, there’s a career path here you might not even know exists.”

Explaining AV to anyone outside the business is notoriously difficult. “My mum still doesn’t really know what I do. People think we just hang TVs on walls. In reality, we sit at the intersection of networks, software, design, and experience. We work closely with architects and interior designers to hide technology, not show it – which is ironic, because we’re often dealing with ugly boxes. We’re the face of the network team.

“I think we would lose staff if all we did was churn out meeting rooms. What excites me most are the bespoke projects – high-end restaurants, LED walls, projection, custom fabrication – where we’re helping deliver an experience, not just installing kit.”

The power of AI
Jack’s best tip for keeping up with the pace of innovation is to follow social media. “LinkedIn is my doom-scroll at night. That’s where I see what other companies are doing, what’s working, what tools people are adopting. I’ll often forward things straight to the team and say, ‘Can we look into this?’ Trade shows are still valuable, but to me they’re more about the people as technology now.”

Artificial Intelligence might not seem to impact the physical nuts and bolts of an SI but you’d be mistaken. “We’re not monetising AI yet, but we’re definitely using it. I’m particularly interested in how AI can support service – analysing years of tickets and suggesting faster, better responses. It’s already changing how people work. We’ve had engineers programme integrations using AI code that previously would’ve required outsourcing.

“That’s huge but I’m also aware that maybe that work I’ve kept inhouse might have gone to another contractor. I’m excited, but also cautious. AI is powerful, and we’re only just scratching the surface.”

Cornish’s goal is for Tateside to become an even more respected and trusted name in the industry – “where people know who we are and what we stand for,” he says. “We want to grow sustainably, improve efficiency, and build processes that take us to the next level. And long-term, I want a business that can run without me being involved day-to-day – even though I still love being hands-on.

“I’m most proud of the team. Seeing people grow, take on responsibility, and build careers here – that’s everything. I’m also proud of how far we’ve come.

“We started soldering racks in a basement. Now we own our own building (in Tower Hill) and work with clients I once dreamed of. I’ve made mistakes of course. Early adoption of technology has bitten me a few times. Wanting to make something work before it was ready. But those lessons shaped how we operate today.”