the best teams in the world and it’s been the most amazing thing to see them all come back to work with beaming smiles. And the DJs have all been so emotional, some literally in tears.
“I’ve worked with Symphotech for seven years so I trust Eddy implicitly. We have been so tight in planning and delivering this with their team on site. He holds his corner well and we’ve both been learning the science developments on a daily basis and updating plans.”
The audience was drawn exclusively from the City of Liverpool and aware they were taking part in a scientific test. Staff and media came from wider afield across the UK. All had to submit a negative COVID test 24 hours prior to coming on site. The audience attended a local test centre to do a lateral flow test and the result sent via their NHS App, linked to their digital ticket. Staff carried out PCR tests and everyone was asked to submit another test result five days after the event to assess the impact of potential spread.
Grant explained: “The Events Company UK has always embraced new technology. To make a better, secure, experience for the audience they integrated their ticketing system with the NHS app and the cashless payment system.
“The home lateral flow test is so simple to self- administer: if that’s what it’s going to take to get gigs back on then, I’m all for it.”
Outside of protocols, the science and technology, this was culturally very interesting, Grant continued: “When I saw Acorn arriving, putting the ‘steels’ in, it was a moment when this felt real and it was going to happen although some of the final permissions were only released at the last minute.
Alongside Grant from Symphotech, for the weekend, were Director Will Hodgson and Nicola O’Boyle. Hodgson said:“This has been a special weekend of
twitter.com/TomorrowsHS
shows for so many reasons, being the first music event with no social distancing or facemasks. I have loved seeing the smiles on young people’s faces as they have come in and clearly been so excited to be finally coming to a live gig. This was a young, fresh audience, who hadn’t been to a gig for 15 months – if ever. It felt like an ‘end-of-year prom’ having being locked up for so long.”
There will be some incisive debriefing of the First Dance event, and the neighbouring Sefton Park outdoor gig with the Blossoms held the following day, as to whether, and how, live music and nightclub events can return.
Explaining some of the future economic implications, Newson said: “Arts Council Funding allowed us to produce this event to the high standard we’d expect with all the additional requirements for COVID. We have used more freelancers to allow double crews, meaning we’ve had over 400 staff on this nightclub test event.
“We’ve had different crews for load-in/event/load- out days, four times as many dressing rooms with enhanced cleaning, a larger press room, 200 hand sanitisers, added screens to bars, fogging overnight, in addition to a time-consuming planning process. All of these things cost money and will affect the economics of any future event.
“I expect there to be a big onus on our duty of care to look after our professional event staff, so a lot of these elements were about staff safety.”
Grant concluded: “We’re very proud to have played our part in these test events and hope that they will be instrumental in bringing back live events, in a safe manner, very soon.”
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