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. 39 Types of outdoor events: examples around mixed media