theconversation.com: Live events are set to make a welcome return as the UK moves out of lockdown in the coming months. Parklife and Wireless are the latest events to confirm that they will go ahead this year, both for September, in Manchester and London respectively. Wireless has yet to announce artists, but Parklife’s bill includes rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Dave, and electronic stars Disclosure.
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It's exciting to see a return of large live music events and hopefully, we'll start to see an increase in that forward motion in the U.S. as well in the near future. I am curious whether the capacity restrictions are large enough to provide an audience that can make the event financially feasible or if these early socially distanced events will just be insanely expensive. I would assume when you're playing to 25% capacity you're charging a lot more to make up for the loss of the other potential 75% of viewers. I do worry that allowing these kinds of events puts too much trust in the attendees to follow Covid guidelines. I don't know about the UK, but I feel like if we allowed this in the U.S. an annoyingly large percentage of the people would take their masks off after they passed the checkpoint and be assholes to the festival workers who tell them to put them back on. We can hope a few people don't ruin these events for the rest of the attendees.
I honestly do not get how they are expecting to lift the restrictions in summer, considering their case numbers and other statistics at this point. Of course the sentiments in other countries would be different, but I think that pretty good number of people will continue to wear masks or at least follow some social distancing rules even after the COVID era seems to come to an end. I really do hope the artists to restart their concert plannings and watch the musicals with full audience (instead of having people every other seats). However, as much as I want the outdoor performances to come back, I do not want them to trigger the huge spread of the virus again and get any blames for them. It will be very difficult to watch everyone and tell people to follow the restriction rules especially when there are easily thousands of people in the outdoor concerts, and I really hope the performances to reopen when they are confident that they could control every members of the audience.
I think that music festivals both have pros and cons during COVID times. A pro is the majority of music festivals occur outside and generally have plenty of room to allow for distancing if capacity was decreased. However, I feel that it will be hard to ensure people keep their masks on and distance maintained at events like this, especially if they are intoxicated. I agree with Magnolia that I think it is putting a lot of faith in concert-goers which could have huge consequences. I think that requiring proof of vaccination will be essential, as while testing is beneficial it is very hard to coordinate a test soon enough before that it is actually effective. I am curious for the future of live music and concerts as well as how the industry will move forward. I cannot wait for the day that I can attend a concert like it was during normal times.
I definitely expected huge changes within the live performance industry post this pandemic. What I kind of didn't expect was how people would be handling this limbo and hopefully wind down from the peak of this pandemic. I hope that this pandemic does wind down during the summer and it becomes safe to go to music festivals however I still am a little pessimistic. I don't thing music festivals will get back to the way that we had them before the pandemic for at least another year or so, just because there are so many people who still have to be vaccinated, there are so many people who are refusing to get vaccinated, and the economic impact that this vaccine had will travel across industries for a while. I do like that these organizations are prepping to have less people at these festivals and are still planning the festival itself because I think music festivals are the perfect way for live performances to start happening again, due to them being held on huge pieces of land and being outdoors. I am also curious on what the affect of vaccine passports will be with our day to day lives this summer and what the backlash to these passports will be.
I am honestly kind of shocked that music festivals are in the works at all. In any country besides Australia. Especially considering that there were recently more lock downs across the UK. I personally feel like these events, even thought they are at a capped capacity are a huge mistake. Even when people have been completely vaccinated it is still imperative that they maintain precautions so that they don't get sick, even will lessened symptoms. I think that outdoor summer concert music is a great way for people to get back into performances again, but events at this large of a scale may cause repercussions. As this article talks about the UK I would be very interesting in reading a similar one about the US and any of its plans concerning music festivals. I also am interested in Vaccine Passports and how they will effect traveling outside of the country now, and in the future post pandemic, as I assume they will stick around.
If the United Kingdom thinks their ready for this type of gathering, more power to them, but I am gonna go and say it again, we're still in a pandemic, I don't foresee this type of event being safely feasible by the summer, but maybe that is just an American perspective. Just because people are being vaccinated does not mean this sort of event is appropriate to bring back full scale so quickly. That being said, outdoor concerts are probably the best place to start bringing back live performance for large crowds, as they are outdoor and can be more easily set up to offer social distancing because of that. I sincerely, sincerely hope that things will be significantly better by the time summer rolls around, but intellectually I expect that we will still be under some pretty stringent guidelines to be safe. As we should, even if not everyone has been.
It’s really interesting reading this article in addition to the above comments. It sounds to me as though the main concern from those above is that we need to make sure that we are staying cautious. And that makes total sense it’s actually common sense. That being said I think companies and festivals will always be pushing the envelope to get things back up and running and things I think so things will always be open before some people think they “should” be. Simply thinking about festivals as a business as soon as artists and the government sign on to do the event it’s not a question of if the public option is behind it but if there are enough people willing to buy a ticket and come to make the event make financial sense. The world we live in with the way that in particular our industry has been at a stand still for so long means that as soon as the $$$ makes sense the events will start coming back. I think a good outside perspective is with this weeks travel guidelines almost as soon as the CDC announced plans airlines start moving to lift some of their precautions.
While it is quite exciting to see that large scale events like this will begin to make a comeback this year, after everything we have gone through in the past year and a month, I’m nervous that we may be jumping the gun. I know that we have the vaccine rolling out, and I have even just gotten my first dose, but it still just makes me nervous to hear that these major festivals are starting to plan their returns. I think it is mostly just the pessimist in me, shining through after a more than a year of misery and loneliness. September is still months away, and by then most everyone will hopefully be fully vaccinated, but regardless. The concept of going to a large music festival, where you will be shoulder to shoulder with people for potentially hours at a time, has become such an alien concept to me. Even just looking back a year and change ago and seeing me with all my classmates in a room with no masks is jarring. My perspective on the world has shifted so much in just the past year, it will be interesting to return to a maskless world.
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