Smaller-Scale UK Festivals Could Be Deemed Safe Enough to Go On

Smaller-scale festivals in the UK could be deemed safe enough to go on, the BBC reports that MPs have been told.

"The idea that the festivals can't go ahead and be socially-distanced is inaccurate," Rowan Cannon, director of festival organisers Wild Rumpus, told the House of Commons Culture Select Committee. She believes that both festivals she organizes - Just So in Cheshire and Timber in South Derbyshire - could protect their audiences amid the pandemic.

"They're both a capacity of around 5,000. They both have vast sites of about 100 acres," she said. "We can absolutely adapt our programming, put infrastructure in place, [and] change the way that we do things, to enable something to happen with social distancing in place."

Contrasting Cannon's statements, Matthew Phillip, organizer of the Notting Hill Carnival, said this year's event is unable to occur with social distancing measures in place.

"It would be very difficult to hold Carnival in its traditional format on the streets with social distancing in place," he said. "It would be devastating for a second year in a row."

"It's not necessarily about a definitive date," said Duncan Bell from the campaign group We Make Events. "It's about a plan: How do we think a safe event happens? What does the insurance scheme allow? How does rapid testing fit into that process?"

"The industry has been resilient... but that can't carry on," he added. "And for most people, that point is absolutely imminent."

Read more on the BBC.