In January, Glastonbury Festival was the first 2021 event of its size to be canceled as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on. With vaccines and rapid testing presenting organizers with more solutions than they had in 2020, though, U.K. lawmakers have been pressed to consider allowing smaller festivals to take place.
Addressing the matter to the House of Commons Culture Select Committee was Rowan Cannon, the director of festival parent company Wild Rumpus. “The idea that the festivals can’t go ahead and be socially-distanced is inaccurate,” she said. “We can absolutely adapt our programming, put infrastructure in place, [and] change the way that we do things, to enable something to happen with social distancing in place.”
Cannon argued that two events under the Wild Rumpus umbrella, Cheshire’s Just So and South Derbyshire’s Timber, fit the bill. “They’re both a capacity of around 5,000,” she said. “They both have vast sites of about 100 acres.”
The festival collapse brought on by COVID-19 restrictions starting in 2020 has left an economic footprint that extends far beyond the U.K. In an echo of last year’s first round of cancellations, U.S. gatherings Coachella and Ultra Music Festival called off their 2021 events last week. A Pollstar report published in December estimates that the live events industry lost $30 billion in 2020 due to the pandemic.
Last month, the U.K. Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee called for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to offer government-funded insurance to event organizers sidelined by the pandemic.
