NOVEMBER | FEATURE
Real live story
How do you organise a city-wide festival during a global pandemic ? Access visited Estonia ’ s Tallinn Music Week to find out
Words : Stuart Wood
In a season that has been wiped
clean of events due to Covid-19 , Tallin Music Week is one of Europe ’ s only major festivals to have gone ahead as planned – or almost as planned .
This city-wide music festival and conference in the Estonian capital serves as a showcase for Estonian music to the world at large . It takes place in a variety of venues across the city ’ s Telliskivi district , bringing together an eclectic mix of musical styles from traditional folk to experimental techno .
This year ’ s festival was supposed to have taken place in May , but lockdown forced TMW ’ s organisers to push the event back to August . Unlike the many UK festivals which did the same , however , TMW was able to go ahead the second time around . Helen Sildna , founder and director of TMW , says adaptability was key : “ The amount of continuous extra work our team had to do due to constant changes was staggering . We all learned to trust our own ability to tackle the unknowns and find solutions quickly on the spot .”
Among the last-minute changes was the imposition of new quarantine rules for inbound travellers to Estonia , just days before the festival was due to begin . This meant many international attendees had to fly out early to avoid being hotel-bound for two weeks , and some international acts had to be cancelled .
The team at TMW did receive regular updates from the Estonian Health Board , however , and these provided vital reassurance that the event could go ahead . Karena Leiger , a crisis management adviser at the Estonian Health Board , says : “ We discussed the worst-case scenarios and my main task was to counsel what kind of measures must be taken to prevent the virus from spreading .
“ I think the most difficult part was the vagueness and the timing - you must be prepared to share valuable information with organisers regardless of the time , and they have to make the changes in a week , even in a day . They have to be prepared even to cancel all events .”
Motown and the President Tallinn Music Week was able to go ahead due to the limited spread of Covid-19 in Estonia , a country with a small and sparse population of just 1.3 million people . As of mid-September , there have been slightly more than 2200 cases of the virus , and just 64 Covid-related deaths . During the week Access spent in Tallinn , public transport was running as usual and venues were open . At TMW events
34