MARCH | FEATURE
A well-positioned view
Goodwood Festival of Speed
It ’ s been an incredibly difficult year for the events industry but the Arena Group has been well placed to maintain its longstanding relationships with some of the UK ’ s best loved outdoor events to weather the Covid storm . Access meets Arena Seating MD Terry Smith .
With the delayed Freedom Day well and truly behind us , Terry Smith is looking forward to working on a series of fullcapacity events following its involvement in the Government ’ s Events Research Programme ( ERP ) pilot series .
Among the ERP events Arena supplied were Goodwood Festival of Speed ; the Wimbledon Championships and the Open Championship golf tournament at Royal St George ’ s . It was also involved in providing seating for the reducedcapacity Queen ’ s Club Championship .
Asked how these projects compared with working on pre-pandemic events , Smith says the biggest difference was the need to work with clients far more closely . “ It also meant being more flexible than ever ; whether that was in relation to payment terms or finalising the spec . We had to be ultra-flexible to give the event operators the best possible chance of going ahead ,” he says .
Terry Smith , MD , Arena Seating
For the Queen ’ s tennis championship , Arena was asked to provide a full seating set-up to enable the event to accommodate the biggest possible audience under government guidelines , which specified it had to be limited to 50 %. “ Seating wise , for Queen ’ s , it was very close to what we had in 2019 ,” says Smith .
The company was also involved in supplying thousands of seats around the outside courts at Wimbledon , which was also limited to accommodating audiences to 50 % of the ground capacity during the early stages of the tournament .
Working to government guidelines during a pandemic clearly presented challenges , but Smith says that , by operating closely with clients , solutions were found to all of them : “ We have inhouse CAD designers and they worked closely with organisers to create the seating layouts but also access and egress ; in order to make sure that there were safe routes and one-way systems . Those additional considerations were particularly challenging at Queen ’ s and Wimbledon where the sites ’ footprints are limited .”
Naturally , Smith has relished the opportunity to get back working on events and has seen how important it has been for everyone involved – from staff to audience members . He says Arena has been relatively fortunate in that it did not have to let many staff members go because of the pandemic .
“ We had a big recruitment campaign ready to go last spring but put that on hold during the pandemic , so we were relatively lean at that point ,” he says . “ We managed to make use of the furlough scheme and we did have to trim our teams a little , but we managed to keep all of our key staff across all divisions . That was hugely important because we have guys who have been with us 30 years and built up a huge amount of specialist experience and knowledge . I was desperate to keep hold of that .
“ The past year has been really challenging but it is brilliant to get back to helping deliver some of these iconic outdoor events that we have been a part of over the years . Now we ’ re coming out the other side , we are hopefully looking at a positive 2021 and a monumental 2022 .”
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