BEST PRACTICE AT EBL

Let the debate begin

Dedicated workshops, TEDx-style talks, panel debates, and roundtable discussions – Event Buyers Live’s content programme is full of opportunity to learn

Decision-making, crowd science, producing large-scale events, festival marketing, event sustainability, and staff welfare are a handful of the topics to be discussed at Event Buyers Live 2022 this November.

StandOut Multimedia, organiser of Event Buyers Live, can exclusively unveil details of the industry event’s respected education programme, alongside a series of industry experts who will facilitate the sessions.

Professor Keith Still, who has more than 30 years of consulting experience across a range of international crowd safety and risk analysis environments, will facilitate a roundtable session on crowd risks and crowd science. He will draw on his vast expertise, which has seen him advise on crowd behaviour and crowd safety considerations for events ranging from 500 people to 3,000,000 people.

Joining Still is Zoe Snow, director of Gary Beestone Associates and – more recently – executive producer of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. Snow will lead a roundtable focused on the production of large-scale events and high-profile ceremonies. Snow has a huge amount of experience in international sports presentation and immersive events and theatre. She will share her recent experiences of working on the opening and closing ceremonies of Birmingham 2022, which required more than 250 rehearsals and involved more than 1,500 cast members.

But what happens when your event doesn’t go to plan? This is the focus of the next roundtable to be announced. Led by Claire Drakeley, senior lecturer, and programme leader of the BA (Hons) Events Management degree at the University of Northampton, Decision making: When it all goes wrong will provide events professionals with food for thought. Drakeley is studying for her PhD, focusing on decision making within event management, and has recently published two chapters in Events MisManagement, considering case studies of failure in event projects.

Drakeley said: “On-event decisions can be hugely complex with multiple stakeholders, limited resources, high levels of risk, and significant safety considerations. This roundtable will draw on all our experiences to explore how we make decisions when there is a failure in the plan and what impacts the effectiveness of the choices we make.”

GATHER ROUND

Event Buyers Live will return in 2022, bringing together event organisers and suppliers in a structured business and

facilitate this practical and thought-provoking session, which has the support of Mental Health UK.

Mathie said: “For many, working in events offers the most amazing, exhilarating, engaging, and fun career path. However, the reality is that, for many, the pressures associated with working in our sector can push us close to the edge and it’s our absolute obligation, as an industry, to look after our people better.

“I’m incredibly passionate about improving the care and support we offer to our fulltime teams, our event staff, freelancers, and volunteers. We work so hard to ensure safe and secure environments for our audiences but it’s time now to focus on the mental and emotional wellbeing of those wonderful eventprofs who make our events come to life!”

SHARING OF KNOWLEDGE

At Bournemouth 7s 2022, Mathie and his team employed a dedicated staff and welfare manager who was tasked with ensuring staff were fed, watered, and rested during the event. The sport and music event featured several dedicated mental health first aiders and the organising team also looked to see where it could reduce shift times and avoid staff starting at the crack of dawn and finishing 18 hours later. It is this practical knowledge and operational best practice that will be shared at the event, which returns for its eighth outing.

Clift concluded: “I’m really pleased to be able to reveal some of our first speakers and some of the key topics to be discussed at EBL. There are more names to be announced in the coming weeks and more topics too. The sessions actively encourage the sharing of knowledge and promote best practice. EBL’s education sessions are respected and well attended. I am sure that this year’s expanded programme of content will encourage debate as well as harmony; a true meeting of both professional and like-minded minds.”

If you would like to attend Event Buyers Live 2022, visit www.eventbuyerslive.com or call the team on 01795 509113.

CRAIG MATHIE

networking environment at Carden Park Hotel, Chester, on November 28-30.

Building on the success of the 2021 event, which facilitated pre-arranged meetings between organisers and suppliers, Event Buyers Live 2022 will continue to deliver for live events professionals that are looking to procure event services for future projects and participate in structured networking and insightful education sessions.

Decision making, crowd science, and producing largescale events are the first three roundtables to be revealed – there will be eight roundtable discussions in total.

Caroline Clift, editor of StandOut magazine and content manager of Event Buyers Live, said: “Like many other event organisers, we strive to offer our guests the best event experience. Following audience feedback, we applied some fresh thinking and created some new content ideas. For example, in our new TEDx-style talks, Mustard Media will deliver an inspiring session on festival marketing, and we have a dedicated panel on diversity, equality, and inclusion, led by Proud Events’ Ben Whur and featuring the expertise of Attitude is Everything.”

SUSTAINABILITY WORKSHOP

Sustainability has always been a popular roundtable discussion at EBL. It’s a key area of focus for live event organisers. Hence, this year’s event will feature a workshop dedicated to sustainability.

The sustainability workshop will be led by isla, an actiondriven body that seeks to accelerate the event industry’s adoption of sustainability measures. Working in collaboration with isla are ecolibrium, Vision: 2025, and A Greener Festival; together, the organisations will share vital knowledge and best practice that will help event professionals to either begin their sustainability journey or progress even further.

“I’m really excited to see some of the industry’s most respected minds in the world of sustainability come together for Event Buyers Live, including isla’s Ellie Ashton-Melia, ecolibrium’s Naomi Lawson, Vision: 2025’s Bethan Riach, and A Greener Festival’s Claire O’Neill,” added Clift. “This workshop session will enable our delegates to delve a little deeper into sustainability, ask pertinent questions of their peers, and conduct small activities that can be replicated when back at their office. I’m really excited for this session and for our dedicated workshop on staff welfare too.”

FOCUS ON STAFF WELFARE

Indeed, Event Buyers Live will also host a workshop on staff welfare, which invites events professionals to discuss the pressures of the events industry, the importance of staff welfare, and some of the imaginative ways that organisers have alleviated stress and addressed welfare at their events and within their own organisations.

Craig Mathie, managing director of Bournemouth 7s, is one of several speakers to

CLAIRE DRAKELEY KEITH STILL

Stunning structures

Temporary structure experts discuss innovation, new contracts, and market conditions

Summer 2022 will go down in history as the hottest ever with the UK and Europe basking in sizzling temperatures never experienced before. Whilst the glorious weather drew massive audiences to events and festivals across the continent, it also meant that event suppliers and crews had to cope with the heat, as well as increased pressure from clients to deliver projects against a backdrop of rising prices and labour shortages.

Steve Cunningham, director of 20-20 Events, recognised the soaring temperatures as he managed the build at Masterpiece London. As Neptunus got to work, delivering two huge Evo structures, temperatures climbed. As a result, Cunningham created a makeshift paddling pool from scaffolding boards and tarpaulin to make life a little more bearable for crews working in the roof of the vast structures.

PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES

Indeed, the extreme conditions were immensely challenging for build crews. Nevertheless, Neptunus successfully completed a wide range of assignments, as the company managed resources and manpower to meet deadlines at numerous events.

Neptunus kicked off the UK festival season at the National Eisteddfod in Tregaron, Wales, supplying more than 10,000 square metres of temporary buildings, creating a festival village and a 2,000-seater main performance pavilion. In Cornwall, it provided Vision Nine’s Boardmasters with back of house facilities for artists and staff, and in Hampshire, it supplied more than 11,000 square metres of air-conditioned structures for Jalsa Salana, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s annual convention.

But its most challenging assignment of the summer was in Boom, Belgium, where Tomorrowland, one of the world’s largest and most iconic music festivals, took 600,000 visitors on a journey.

Organised and owned by brothers Manu and Michiel Beers, who founded the electronic dance music festival in 2005, Tomorrowland’s reputation has been built on bringing the biggest and most influential names in electronic music to perform against an extraordinary “out of this world” AV experience. 2022 saw the annual event extended to a third weekend, guaranteeing record-breaking attendance. As preferred structure supplier, Neptunus’ research and development team collaborated with Tomorrowland’s designers to push the boundaries to create bespoke and inspiring temporary structures.

Neptunus certainly rose to the occasion in 2022 and created a new structure called The Flower of Life, a round structure with a free span of 45 metres with a waterfall at its centre! It took just one and a half weeks to build, and the structure can now be found in the Neptunus product range under the name Poseidon, the Greek God of the Sea.

INNOVATION

Neptunus is not the only structure company to innovate and invest in its portfolio. Evolution Dome, the inflatable structures specialist, has developed a battery solution that can keep its structures inflated during an event.

ARENA AT THE OPEN

Traditionally, an Evolution Dome structure required a generator running 24/7 to install it and keep it inflated for the duration of an event. Now, the battery pack’s 20 KVA system can support a structure for 14 hours and can fully recharge in as little as 90 minutes, requiring just one eighth of the diesel draw.

Mar-Key Group is in the process of manufacturing the first piece of a new structure – The Horizon – for a test build this October. Organisers will be invited to Mar-Key Group’s premises to view the new product, which Ben Scroggie, managing director of Mar-Key Group, says will have weight loading capacities “rarely seen in our industry”. He said: “It will be a game-changer in terms of the type of events that our clients could hold inside a ‘temporary structure’. Think cars suspended from the roof and it gives you an idea of the capability of what this structure can offer.”

PRICE INCREASES

This year, Mar-Key Group installed not two, but three multi-level structures for Royal Ascot, offering extensive highend hospitality experiences for racegoers. The contract was the first year of a new multiyear deal with the equestrian event and sits alongside several other new and large multi-year deals, including Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT), and Polo in the Park.

GL events UK also supplied structures to RIAT and entered into a new four-year agreement with European Tour Group. It also signed a new multi-year deal with the Goodwood estate.

David Tunnicliffe, commercial director of GL events UK, said: “People are enquiring about kit for next year, people are asking about how things can be done cheaper, and people are trying to plan better.”

Tunnicliffe explained that GL events’ books are closed for September to give the team enforced breathing space off the back of delivering temporary overlay at Birmingham 2022. He also said that the events industry may have to look at the flexibility in pricing strategies because some prices being paid are “not fair at the time of delivery”.

“We pre-booked our crew with agencies for a set price,” Tunnicliffe said. “But in April those agencies said that they could no longer supply crew at those prices. They said: ‘Sorry, it’s force Majeure.”

According to Tunnicliffe, the events industry should brace itself for price increases. Organisers will either need to sacrifice quality, go commercial, or put ticket prices up. Tent value has not increased but the price to deliver temporary structures has because fuel and material costs have increased, as have waste disposal fees.

DESIGN-LED

As an increasing number of organisers turn to temporary structure providers to manage their temporary overlay and infrastructure, they will look for cost efficiencies. Furthermore, temporary structure providers will look to tie organisers into multi-year deals, which safeguard both parties, achieve cost savings, and enable strategic partnerships to be formed.

Arena has a long-standing relationship with The R&A and recently supplied temporary structures to The 150th Open. Arena delivered design-led venues, fan villages, and hospitality suites to the golf tournament, won by Cameron Smith.

Ross Robertson, managing director (UK and Europe) of Arena Structures, commented: “We’ve been privileged to help support and deliver a number of high-profile golf events this year including The 150th Open, The Senior Open, The Hero Open, Cazoo Classics, Women’s Scottish Open, Cazoo Open, and Women’s Open. We are very proud of the structures we have delivered, and our teams have worked incredibly hard to deliver world-class projects. Our success is a testament to the trust our clients have in our ability to deliver and support their events.”

JALSA SALANA