IN FOCUS: THE POST-COVID CHALLENGE OF RESTARTING EVENTS
F
rom the heartaches and headaches of cancelling large-scale events during the 2020 COVID pandemic, Tasmanian promotors and planners are adjusting to a new way of organising events. Whether its marathons or music festivals, events are reemerging.
The festival organisers managed to conduct one of the last large-scale events before COVID struck - Party in the Paddock and have also become one of the first to return live music to the masses.
“The original vision of everyone comfortably spread out on picnic blankets and even after meeting the original square metre coverage requirements, was deemed unsafe and too complex for the event site and the amount of patrons that we had already coming - this also included strictly no dancing. We would have had to compromise the integrity of the event to continue it at the Basin, our only options were to postpone, cancel or continue on at another location. After reaching out to our audience with the question, the overwhelming consensus was that the show must go on.”
Festival Director Jesse Higgs says while they couldn’t manage to stage a New Year’s Eve event as they’d hoped, they thought their fortunes had changed with the rebirth of Launceston’s iconic Basin Concert.
At an extra cost of close to $100,000, Vibestown managed the “logistical nightmare” of relocating the event within the space of a week to Inveresk and rebadging it the Basin-ish Concert.
For months they worked with the Department of Public Health on a COVID plan for the music festival at Cataract Gorge in late March.
In an ironic twist, the COVID regulations actually ensured the Basin-ish Concert went ahead. Had it remained at the Basin, the event would have been flooded out after torrential rain caused flooding of the South Esk River.
But the “new normal” of event organising involves amplified risks, both financially and physically, and it’s taking some getting used to, with clear communication becoming an even bigger necessity and paramount for success. The “show must go on” if the crew from Vibestown have anything to do with it.
6
“It was two weeks out and we still didn’t have approval despite the on-going conversation for months. Their decision was based upon their concern of the complexity of the Basin site. With the updated restrictions, everyone would have had to be seated on chairs, even on uneven and hilly ground, given the lay of the land,” Jesse explains.
The East Coast Harvest Odyssey 2021 was not so lucky, it had to postpone after the weather event caused flooding across the ECHO Festival’s Cranbrook site.
