AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 66

3. INFORMAL EVENTS WILL HELP REVIVE THE HIGH STREET
For how much longer will the High Street imagine that it can carry
on in the old way? It likes to blame outside factors – business rates,
parking spaces and parking charges, Amazon – for its plight. But it
needs to make radical innovations itself, or it will die.
A conscious strategy with events, and in the first place with
informal events, could allow the High Street to stage happenings in
real life that form a thrilling alternative to the virtual fare offered
by screens. In the process, informal events could help transform
the High Street into a place with skilled, well-paying jobs, high
productivity, and a very dynamic impact on entertainment,
education and technological innovation.
Yes, UK retailing needs a new regime of highly-trained, informed
customer service. And yes, it also needs automation. Here Zara has
brought in robots to handle back-office deliveries to a click-and-collect
store at Westfield, Stratford, while both Tesco and China’s JD.com have
been experimenting with autonomous vehicles for delivering goods to
the home. However, the main thing retailers need is stronger footfall.
Without more footfall, the High Street will die. But informal
events can help build that footfall.
Retailers cannot and must not keep trying to win the last war.
The crisis on the High Street will force them to reinvent themselves,
so that they get into a position where they can fight a new and very
different war. They need to make a carefully costed but decisive turn
toward mounting the kind of attractions that work best in person, and
which shopping online can never provide.
Sales will still be important. But, on their way to 2030,
shopkeepers will also have to ask themselves: what calibre of
experience per square metre can I offer this month?
Of course, the High Street needs better architecture, design, street
furniture, signage, maps, lighting, security and all the rest. And of
course, shops themselves need excellent hygiene, great acoustics, fast
payment systems, good security, Wi-Fi that works and good facilities
for staff and for logistics.
Yet just as important as the physical and digital architecture of
the High Street is what Nick Morgan calls its Live Architecture – the
flesh-and-blood, see-and-be-seen elements of human performance,
participation and improvisation.
Through real, live musicians, singers, dancers, DJs, science
demonstrators, teachers, sports people, fitness trainers, debaters,
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