Covid Pilot Festival 😷 🎸

Liverpool hosted a live music festival with no social distancing or masks required for the first time since the pandemic hit as part of the UK government’s trial plans.

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While the world reels from the aftermath of Covid-19, and fragmented vaccination programs, live music events are slowly starting to pop up across the globe.

Over the weekend, the city of Liverpool saw the return of live music without restrictions around social distancing or wearing masks, for the first time since the pandemic struck in early March 2020.

It was part of the UK government’s efforts to determine whether such events; which are potentially super spreader events when it comes to the transmission of the coronavirus, are possible to implement on a wider scale, as the UK comes out of the back of their third lockdown, which ended around the second week of April.

The event, held in Sefton Park, Liverpool, saw 5,000 people attend in a purpose-built tent consisting of three acts: local singer-songwriter Zuzu, up-and-coming indie group The Lathums, and headliners Blossoms.

All ticket holders had to take a supervised lateral flow test at one of four testing centers in the city of Liverpool, the day before and were only allowed in if the test was negative.

They were also encouraged to take more sensitive PCR tests on the day of the show and to do so again five days later, on Friday. That will be crucial to working out whether there was any spread of the virus.

As part of the research conducted by the UK Government’s “Events Research Programme”, scientists are also studying other factors like audience movement and interaction, ventilation, duration, catering, and alcohol consumption. Observers with clipboards wandered around the music festival making notes of these patterns.

But what is the point of having a one-off live event?

It’s all intending to work out how summer music festivals can go ahead after 21st June, when Stage 4 of the UK Government reopening roadmap will, in theory, see the end of restrictions on social contact.

Whether or not the government does decide to open up live events like these in the future remains to be seen, however, music fans certainly had a blast after being restricted indoors for the better part of over a year.

Liverpool local singer-songwriter, Zuzu, who opened the act said:

“It was just unreal, It felt like jumping out of an airplane. My heart was going in a big way. It was incredibly emotional. I tried to keep it together on stage. But during the last song I choked up, and when I came off stage, I’m not even ashamed to admit that I cried. I fully cried. It was amazing.”

Elsewhere, the city of Wuhan, the alleged origin of the coronavirus, also saw open-air live music festivals return, with the ‘Strawberry Music Festival’ seeing thousands of fans attend, naturally, much to the ire of people around the world, who hold negative sentiments towards the city of Wuhan and China, for being insensitive to the aftermath of the coronavirus around the globe.

While the timing of such events was questioned by many, taking into account the fact that many countries are still crumbling from the deadly virus, it was generally well-received by music fans across the globe, who finally have something to look forward to, in what has been a financially crippling year for the Live-Music and Gig economy.

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Originally published at https://incentify.substack.com.