The music industry have shared their first look on how festivals can go ahead next year in light of the coronavirus pandemic. It will, of course, be a relief to know that festivals can go ahead at all (at the moment!), after this uneventful summer of cancellations and enthusiastic attempts at taking them online. For all of us, and for the industry, this is very good news indeed.
The advice comes from a collaboration between the following bodies: the Association of Festival Organisers (AFO), the Events Industry Forum (EIF) and Attitude Is Everything, alongside additional guidance from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and Public Health England (PHE). They have shared their current guidance in a document which you can read in full here. As the situation progresses, the advice will update.
Available now and free to all from @ThePurpleGuide website. The aim is to assist festival organisers, local authorities and other industry parties in assessing risk levels and planning based on a flexible, pragmatic and realistic approach to the current pandemic.
— AIF (@AIF_UK) October 13, 2020
The COVID-19 Supplementary Guidance offers a lot of information for festival organisers that will perhaps be of little interest to festival-goers. Naturally, much of this advice depends on a number of constantly changing variables, including the situation with testing for coronavirus and the potential for a vaccine to be in place. Terms that have become part of our everyday vocabulary come up here as well; there is talk of festival staff wearing PPE, festival-goers bringing their own disposable masks and hand sanitiser, and embracing the NHS Track & Trace initiative.
The document also contains a “mitigation checklist”, as relevant to the current state of the pandemic. This is a list of questions that comprehensively covers the planning and safety of every conceivable area of a festival, including the organisation of the outdoor space, crowd control, and the safety of festival staff.
The guidance is thoughtful with regard to all of this uncertainty; it notes, that the experience of putting on a festival during COVID will be a first for many of them, and also that COVID should not eclipse the rest of their health and safety provision. The COVID-19 Supplementary Guidance maintains a positive tone throughout.
Despite all the uncertainty that the industry currently faces, it concludes with a positive note: “ultimately, the music festival industry is principally defined by planning for and implementing mitigation of risk … Festival organisers are already practically in a very good place to meet the challenges that COVID-19 bring to the festival sector.”
Paul Reed, the CEO of the Association of Independent Festivals, said this about the new guidance: “Risk mitigation is what festival promoters do for a living, so the intent of this guidance is to outline Covid-19 specific planning considerations that will allow for bespoke risk assessment approaches in liaison with relevant authorities and agencies … I’d like to thank the AIF Ops Group for leading on this important piece of work and also DCMS, PHE officials and the wider festival industry for their invaluable contributions.”
The document presents comprehensive and reassuring guidance about the state of festivals next year. It is undoubtedly going to be an enormous job for festival organisers, and much remains subject to change. In wake of the new advice, though, festival-goers can finally relax for the time being, and cast their minds longingly to much simpler organisational tasks, like what to wear, and who to see if the line-up clashes.
