Festival Safety Conference To Be Held Following 2011 Tragic Events
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Written by Elliott Batte
After last year’s tragic stage collapses at a number of festivals across the world, a conference has been called by the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) to review ‘Structural and Crowd Safety’.
Belgium’s Pukkelpop Festival, the Ottawa Blues Festival, and the Indiana State Fair all suffered badly from stage collapses, with a number of people killed and dozens injured. The conference will look at everything from the engineering behind stage structures to the emergency procedures should anything like a stage collapse happen again in the future.
While it was generally only international festivals that suffered the collapses due to bad weather conditions and climates, British festival organisers warned in the summer of last year that a stage collapse could happen at a UK-based festival too – and that tragedies like the Indianapolis festival, which saw five killed, affect the whole festival community.
Roger Barrett of STAR Event Group, who will be present at the conference, said: “In my experience, the lack of basic engineering knowledge shown by a great many suppliers of temporary structures to festivals is nothing short of disgraceful, so whose fault is it that they get the work?”
AIF co-founder Ben Turner added: “AIF feels that not just hired experts, but the festival owners themselves need to understand the reasons for an increase in these incidents. It is important that the key stakeholders and the industry at large have a clearer understanding of this critically important aspect of putting on live events. From the initial response to this seminar it is also clear that this is a feeling shared by many in the industry.”
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