Research Around COVID-Safe Reopening Schemes

A few months into the pandemic it became apparent that efforts of stakeholders in the dance music community needed to be focused on rapid test events. Waiting for an entire population to be vaccinated wasn’t realistic, waiting for governments to understand club and festival culture and act on our behalf was proving to be a slow and disappointing process. As we approached the colder months, the need to explore new ways of reopening music and cultural indoors spaces in a way that was viable for the organisers of these events (without social distancing) became urgent.

Approach:

Contacting key event organisers in European and North American territories to identify those progressing dialogue with their local governments for rapid test events as the transitional next step forward showed how poorly prepared and conservative most governments have been with negotiating around this topic. A few had been able to push rapid testing events minus social distancing forward for approval by their governments.

In October, rapid tests were finally introduced and approved by various health authorities with increased accuracy and affordability of the rapid antigen tests, and with a 99.68% accuracy rate in a little under fifteen minutes. Berlin’s Clubcommission created a detailed plan to use nightclub staff alongside hundreds of volunteer medical professionals to set up and run rapid testing stations within Berlin’s vacant club and cultural spaces. Primarily to increase testing rates, and later with a view to reopening these spaces for their intended purpose.

In the Netherlands, the Field Lab collective of festivals and other large scale event organisers are working with the Dutch government to set up rapid testing zones in several cities across the country, and are planning for a series of trial concerts in January 2021.

Next Steps:

Although the second wave and heightened lockdowns in Europe put a stop to most test event trials there, one large scale rapid test event run by Primavera Sound with 500 attendees was successfully completed on December 12th in Barcelona’s Apollo Theatre.

Preliminary results are expected by the end of December and full results by the end of January 2021, with the hope of providing positive perspective for closed spaces and festivals for 2021.

We remain in close contact with these event organisers to support their efforts and share the outcomes so that the most effective and viable models / blueprint for safe events can be advocated and deployed across territories as soon as possible. If you are aware of organisers with a progressive approach to the concept of reopening live concert venues and club spaces without social distancing, please share their information with us.