A concerning crowd behavioural trend that Kemp has seen at events this year has been a sharp rise in the consumption of alcohol . In some cases , he says the increase in drinking has resulted from organisers incorrectly balancing commercial gain with safety considerations .
He has also found event operators are taking impressive steps to control audience access to booze , and therefore create safer event environments . Says Kemp , “ Some of the organisations that we ’ ve been working with have incredible structures in place . If you take cricket , they control how much alcohol is sold depending on how the crowd is behaving ; so they reduce the number of pints bought at any one time by slowing the queues down between innings .”
Stuart , who is also the chair of the Global Crowd Management Alliance
Chris Kemp Rob Walley
( GCMA ), regularly speaks to event security specialists worldwide . He says there is a belief among many involved in the GCMA that much of the poor behaviour at festivals during the summer resulted from participants having watched the Netflix documentary Trainwreck : Woodstock ‘ 99 . Over three parts , the series shows how Michael Lang ’ s attempt to reprise
his famous festival brand results in utter chaos , including widespread rioting and arson .
“ There ’ s a theory that a lot of the younger generation have seen that film and decided that if they don ’ t like what ’ s going on at a festival , they ’ re going to copy what happened at Woodstock ‘ 99 . I ’ m quite convinced that it has influenced behaviour at events this year , as does almost everybody I speak to . The film came out at the start of the summer , and suddenly we saw a sharp rise in fires at events , things being smashed , security being challenged and people stealing from stalls at a level we haven ’ t seen before .
“ My inclination with our work is to avoid at all costs blaming crowds and people ’ s behaviour and instead look at the root causes . In the main , the root causes are Covid related ; pent-up aggression , frustration with being controlled and told what to do by a Government it transpires weren ’ t behaving themselves . It ’ s a whole raft of societal issues , people are fed-up . Ultimately , it has led to behaviour that we ’ re finding really challenging to deal with on event sites .”
Controlled Events founder Rob Walley has worked on events including The Boat Race and the Platinum Jubilee this year . He says when trying to prevent crowd control issues , communication between all event staff is key , whether it is creating briefing cards for them or a WhatsApp group that provides all with incident guidance .
“ The person who the event attendee meets first is usually traffic management or a steward ; someone at the furthest corner of the event . They ’ re the people that tend to get paid the least
“ The Government has even talked recently about a tick box form for counterterrorism threat assessment .”
– Eric Stuart
and briefed the least , they may or may not even have a radio , but they ’ re often our first eyes and ears to a problem so it ’ s vital they are engaged and advised .”
Short change The pandemic left many event industry workers looking for alternatives as the work dried up , not least security personnel . Michael Kill is CEO of the Night Time Industries Association and chair of the UK Door Security Association . The latter organisation conducted a survey of its members in 2021 that found personnel resource levels had fallen to 80 % of the prepandemic level .
Kill says the Security Industry Authority ( SIA ) has reported record numbers of applications for door security roles but they do not give a true
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