CBC News is reporting on the effects weather is having on summer festivals up North. It will be interesting to see what happens to the rest of the season… so far, not so good. Earlier this month we had several festivals in the US and Europe that either had days cancelled or sites evacutated.
Industry News
Buenos Aires has banned EDM festivals
Glastonbury Looks To Curtail Peeing in Public

Poisoning the water?
UK festivalgoers have the unique distinction of being the most liberal, when it comes to determining a good location to relieve oneself. It seems that the Glastonbury Festival is being forced to mitigate this issue, by the environmental agency that monitors the festival.
According to event organizers, the water table at the site is continuously monitored by them and a the local Environmental Agency and if the agency determines that the water table has become polluted they have the power to shut down the fest.
Determined to not allow the Environmental Agency to piss on their festival, the Glastonbury folks have decided to have a contest to see who can come up with the best artwork that will be used on site to encourage the beer guzzling blokes to make their way to one of the many additional urinals that will be added this year, instead of poisoning the local water.
If you think that you’ve got what it takes to create an image so inspiring that it would cause drunk festival goers to make the extra effort to get to a toilet, then go to http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/design-our-dont-pee-campaign-logo-win-glastonbury-tickets/ and if your design is selected you can win a pair of tix for Glasto and a spot in the Worthy View Campsite… which I presume has toilets.
Bringing Crowd Psychology into Event Safety Management
John Drury is a social psychologist at Sussex University. He has been conducting research on crowd behaviour for 25 years. Some of the crowd events he and his colleagues have investigated include the Hajj to Mecca, the Hillsborough disaster, the poll tax riot and the July 7th London bombings. His group’s research website is here. His research findings have informed guidance on disaster response, for both the Department of Health and the US Department of Homeland Security, amongst others. He has provided consultancy and education to a number of event and crowd safety organisations, including the Event Safety Institute (NL) and the Crowd Safety Management degree course at Bucks New University. In this article, John describes some recent research on the crowd psychology of event safety management.
When I talk to event and crowd safety professionals, there is one outdoor music event that everyone seems to know about and have an opinion on. This is the Big Beach Boutique II, which took place on the beach in my hometown, Brighton, in July 2002. This free music event, with headliner Fatboy Slim, is widely known as a ‘near disaster’. Based on the previous year’s event, the organisers planned for a crowd of 65,000. But this local event ended up being publicised nationally – principally through Fatboy Slim’s partner Zoe Ball, who mentioned it on her Radio 1 show. The result was that around 250,000 people turned up that day.
The stewards, security and emergency services – not to mention the facilities – were completely overwhelmed. Average density levels were estimated at five people per square metre. And yet it wasn’t quite the disaster that some feared. For example, it is unclear whether the reported numbers of minor injuries and hospital admissions for this event were out of line with the expected patient presentation rate for a mass gathering of this size and audience profile.
Part of my interest in this event was in the role of crowd behaviour in preventing disaster. My previous research – for example on survivor behaviour in response to the July 7th London bombings – had shown that a new shared identity was created among commuters in the bombed carriages and this identity enabled them to help each other and coordinate. This was very important given that the emergency services couldn’t reach them at first – ‘community resilience’ meant solidarity within a crowd. I thought this idea could be extended to help explain why the Big Beach Boutique II didn’t end in disaster. Here too there was a crowd in a dangerous situation and yet stewards and emergency responders were limited in number.
With my colleagues David Novelli and Clifford Stott, I carried out a research study of perceptions and behaviours in the event. We reviewed all the documentation and reports produced before and after the event – we interviewed party-goers, plus police, stewards, ambulance personnel and others; and we carried out a questionnaire survey among a larger sample of party-goers.
Everyone seems to be agreed that there were a number of dangers at the event: some party-goers climbed the lighting rig, the tide was coming in, and there was a danger of a surge and crushing as a large number of people tried to leave the beach at once. But there was some disagreement about the reasons why there was not a tragedy. The police and some of the stewards referred to their own organisational resilience; they were flexible, adaptive and sometimes even ‘heroic’. The police also referred to their use of coercion as an explanation for the prevention of the disaster, such as the deployment of riot officers to prevent people jumping off the groynes into the sea. However, no one else referred to the use of force – apart from one or two stewards, who mocked it.
The third explanation was common to the stewards and the party-goers. They referred to spontaneous self-organisation in the crowd. People were cooperative in shielding others when people needed privacy for a pee. They coordinated and were calm when they exited the narrow steps away from the beach. They felt confident enough to regulate the over-boisterous behaviour of others; because there was a strong sense of unity they knew they would be backed up. Behaviour was rule-governed.
The most skilled and insightful safety professionals built on this rule-governed behaviour in the crowd. They employed it to deal with the problem of people climbing the lighting rigs. They enlisted Fatboy Slim to ask them to come down because they knew that party-goers would listen to him rather than to the authorities. And the crowd cheered the people as they came down and thereby defined a new norm. No one climbed the rigs again after that.
The survey we carried out allowed us to examine the psychological process underlying these behaviours. There were some interesting connections. Many people said that the organisers of the event had ‘lost control’, and some party-goers said that this was one of the things that made it such a special occasion – a free party, like a festival, is about freedom from the control of the authorities. But at the same time party-goers consistently said they felt safe. Why?
The survey found that a key predictor of feeling safe at the event was shared social identity with the crowd. The more that people felt psychologically united with other party-goers as a single ‘we’, instead of focused on their personal identity, the safer they felt. The survey also showed that the reason that shared identity with the crowd made people feel safe was because it increased expectations that other people in the crowd would help and support them if needed and would act responsibly in the event of an emergency. Basically, shared identity seemed to enhance trust among strangers. Hence it was those – often the people unused to club culture and the party scene – who didn’t identify with the crowd who found the density and atmosphere aversive and threatening.
A way of summarising the conclusion of the study is to say what many crowd safety professionals know already: managing crowd safety requires the consent of the crowd. While many popular images malign the psychology of the crowd – through references to ‘mass panic’ and ‘mob mentality’ – research shows that united crowds provide the basis of collective resilience. Our studies have shown that this is as true in the case of highly routinised but still potentially stressful crowd events such as the annual Hajj to Mecca as in relatively uncontrolled free party events like the Big Beach Boutique II. This research also points to some key lessons in the successful integration of the science of crowd psychology with the practice of event and crowd safety management.
First: know the social identity of the crowd at your event. If you know the identity, you will understand the punters’ norms (social rules) and be able to work with them, not against them.
Second: facilitate the social identity of the crowd. Crowd members support each other in all sorts of ways ranging from the smallest courtesy to helping someone who has fallen down in a moshpit. You rely on that mutual supportiveness both for safety and for the atmosphere that a united crowd provides. Notice which of your actions and communications serve to unite the crowd around shared norms with you, and which might divide them from you or divide them amongst each other.
Third: communicate. Everyone seems to agree that communication matters, but now we have the data on why it works. Not only does good communication provide people with information (facilities, locations, correct exits in an emergency), it can also enhance the relationship between organisers and punters, in a virtuous relationship of trust.
The full article on the Big Beach Boutique II study is available here.
article courtesy of www.festivalinsights.com
One dead, several hospitalized from heat, drugs after Paradiso music festival
The Paradiso electronic music festival in Central Washington turned deadly for one young man and sent dozens more to area hospitals for heat- and drug-related illnesses, officials said Monday. A 22-year-old Port-land man died Sunday morning after attending Paradiso at the Gorge Amphitheater in Central Washington. Beau B. Brooks died at Confluence Health-Central Washington Hospital in Wenatchee.
Source: One dead, several hospitalized from heat, drugs after Paradiso music festival – The Spokesman-Review
Chipotle Events Get Intelligence Boost
Until now, event producers and sponsors have never had an accurate, economical and low-profile way of counting patrons at free events. C3 Presents and Chipotle Mexican Grill needed real-time data measuring the total occupants on site, as well as an “after-event report” analyzing the data.
EIG has been contracted to provide our exclusively licensed video analytics software to handle the task. EIG accurately counts patrons entering and exiting the site with low-profile cameras mounted at entry portals. EIG provides these services as a stand-alone service or as part of a comprehensive surveillance and intelligence package.
Each Cultivate event features lively performances by popular bands. Renowned national and local chefs entertain with inspiring cooking demonstrations. Festival-goers of all ages dive into interactive experiences focused on sustainable food practices, including an exhibit that shows attendees how to make Chipotle’s famous guacamole. Each event also features an exhibit on the reality of processed foods and a more spirited Kids’ Zone with snacks and fun activities.
It’s easy to see why these events are so popular. Because of their popularity, they experience high traffic levels. Hand-counting event traffic is tedious, inaccurate, and leaves out important data that is critical to analyzing each event. EIG is proud to provide Cultivate events with our comprehensive event intelligence.
Chipotle and C3 Presents are producing three Chipotle Cultivate events this year, in Phoenix, AZ, Kansas City, MO, and Minneapolis, MN. Event Intelligence Group will be providing video analytic services at all their events.
Even smaller events are beginning to understand that risk mitigation and public health and safety are key to a successful event
No cost too big for ensuring festival safety, organizers say
“Organizers of the [N.C. Azalea Festival] and public safety officials say no price tag is too big for ensuring the safety for the festival and those attending.
“Safety is the festival’s most paramount issue we deal with every year,” said Jonathan Hedge, assistant treasurer on the board of directors for the festival. “We want everybody who comes down to the Azalea Festival for any of the functions to have a safe, family environment so they can enjoy all of the activities.”“
Via Star News Online
Electric Zoo’s use of EIG technology improved public health and safety
Electric Zoo to Clamp Down on Drugs This Year
“High above the grassy parkland on Randall’s Island—site of this weekend’s Electric Zoo music festival—hangs a robotic camera so powerful it can read text on a note pad 80 feet below.
Security officials will monitor the video feed from the camera and 11 more like it from a command center nearby, part of a new strategy during the three-day music fair to keep drugs off the island.”
This is how a local authority gets rid of a festival
Camp Bisco 2015 Return in Doubt Over Safety, Drug Concerns
“Fans were hoping that the controversial jam and electronic update New York music festival, Camp Bisco, was going to make its triumphant return to Mariaville in 2015 after being denied permits in 2014. That appears to be in jeopardy as recent developments at the local level of government have put organizers on the back foot even after they were granted some permits to go ahead with this year. The primary concerns presented by officials are whether or not plans put forth by new festival organizers will do enough to address safety and drug issues that have plagued the event in the past.”
Via Music Times
If you don’t feel safe inside the perimeter of a music festival without your gun, stay home with your gun
Gun ban at Norman Music Festival sparks lawsuit
“Guns and alcohol don’t mix well. The Norman Music Alliance does not want to put conceal carry music fans in danger of a felony charge because they carried in a place where low point beer is served.”
Via NewsOK