Endless Events: The whole world is talking about it, including the Brew Crew: inflation and recession are on the horizon – yet again. In certain industries, it has fully arrived. But since the events industry is so interconnected with the rest of the economy, event profs are also starting to feel the effects of rising costs and labor shortages. We cannot help but wonder and worry: are events going to survive?
2 comments:
A lot of good points are brought up but something that stuck out to me was the call for more sustainable event planning methods, such as sourcing closer to cut down on the cumulative shipping costs.
But for an industry such as ours, that can really only go so far when there are only so many locations to purchase things from in person within a reasonable enough to drive to area. And how do you know what can truly remain stock and what to get rid of when the needs of a production can shift so wildly?
I still am of the opinion that maintaining a stock inventory of constructed scenic elements is something every theatre should be doing.
We built 3 shows this year that had studwalls for an eighteen inch deck. We threw them all away.
One of the first shows next year will call for an eighteen inch stage deck. We are going to build studwalls for it.
Really? Is this the kind of thing that makes us the best? We are throwing our money away and then telling designers that they can't have X, Y, or Z because there is no money.
We should address these things before even beginning to consider the effects of inflation and recession on our craft.
I'm glad that the events industry is looking into creative solutions to work around inflation and the recession. At the end of the day, there will always be some kind of event put on. There's extremely high demand for it, after all. Events help us mark occasions, be with friends or loved ones, discover new things, and sometimes simply get away from daily life. The easiest events to put on would technically be smaller, local events, as they can be sourced from nearby to keep prices low. However, I think that this article is more referring to bigger, arena-style events wherein everyone's got to stay in a hotel nearby. It is true, there will likely be less incentive for massive crowds to go to those kinds of events frequently with rising costs. In which case, I strongly hope they look into hybrid options to include their community that can't fly to San Diego for a weekend, for example. That's really my biggest hope - that after COVID, we continue to consider hybrid events as an asset to reach out to more people.
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