Christopher BarrettFestival Republic MD Melvin Benn has confirmed his plan to stage a second festival pilot, as part of the Events Research Programme (ERP), will be a three-day, 10,000-capacity, festival event with camping in mid-June.
The event will follow the promoter’s 5,000-capacity greenfield festival pilot at Liverpool’s Sefton Park on 2 May, and a series of other ERP events that have have included 4,500 attending the BRIT Awards and 21,000 watching The FA Cup at Wembley Stadium without social distancing.
Speaking during an online conference panel session organised by IQ magazine, Benn said the aim of the camping event will be to test the protocol of how to deal with anyone that might have Covid at the event: “It’s about testing the protocols around using Covid certification on the NHS app, and it’s also around testing the protocols of what the SAGE scientists here in the UK want, which is at-home testing for all attendees that don’t have the vaccination and that are not immune.”
Commenting on the size of the forthcoming festival pilot, Benn said, “It’s not like Reading or Lollapalooza Chicago or anything like that, but it’s a decent number, and certainly a number that they can adequately take data from and multiply.”
He went on to say that the UK Government appears to have a coherent plan to reopen venues and events, and it is now more concerned about the possible spread of Covid-19 on public transport than at live events.
He said, “The area that they are significantly most concerned about actually is not so much the venues, they know [the operators] will look after everybody at the venues, it is public transport. It is large amounts of people squashed with no circulation on buses coming into Glasgow City Centre, or coming on tubes into Wembley Stadium. I believe that’s the area they are more concerned about, compared to the actual venues themselves, particularly outdoor venues.”