AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 39
Sound City
Notting Hill Carnival
MUSIC EVENTS,
MUSIC INDUSTRY
CONFERENCE
& WORKSHOPS
STEEL BANDS, ETC
Has had incidents and
negative media coverage
in the past, but now
works well
Both B2C and B2B
MIXED
MEDIA
Maidstone River
Festival
Elrow,
Olympic Park,
East London
RAFTING, MILITARY
RE-ENACTMENTS,
FIREWORKS
Henley Festival
TECH HOUSE MUSIC,
COSTUME, PARTYING, GAMES
ON DANCE FLOORS
MUSIC, COMEDY,
FIREWORKS
A party, first begun
near Barcelona
Chart 7
Family event
Charity event
That can’t be right. When Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space,
flew to Manchester in July 1961, thousands mobbed him and crowds
broke through a very large police presence. Now, that really was a
memorable event; but the Russian was forced to address more than
5000 Trafford Park workers from… a car park. Has Britain’s respect
for events really not moved on since then?
In Charts 6 and 7 above, and Charts 8 and 9 overleaf, we list some
important kinds of outdoor event. The charts show not only the broad
genres of events, but also the ease or difficulty with which each is able
to get a licence.
What the charts show is that the licensing of different events
is dogged by relatively high levels of inconsistency. Despite being
prone to incidents or having untoward local impacts, some
events repeatedly gain licences with ease, perhaps because they
are relatively upmarket. Other, more informal events encounter
significant difficulty with licensing, perhaps because they appear
plebeian in composition.
Altogether, something of a ‘People Like Us’ atmosphere seems
to accompany some events, while more than a few informal ones
are too easily stigmatised.
Thinking about 2030, it’s clearly time to move on from the
prejudices that still accompany many events.
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Types of outdoor events: examples around mixed media