Sound of silence ... Summer the music stopped
While the sun shines on empty festival fields across Ireland, organisers are feeling chill economic winds with no income, writes Sean Pollock
EVERY August bank holiday weekend since 2010, a field on the outskirts of the sleepy Co Cork town of Mitchelstown has sparked into life.
As many as 15,000 revellers from all over the world descend on the 52-acre site, overlooked by the Galtee Mountains, kitted out in their finest festival gear and ready for Indiependence, to see big bands from Bastille to Biffy Clyro.
Things were looking bigger than ever this year, until Covid-19 struck and forced the soldout festival to be cancelled.
With an enforced fallow year, the bright lights and colour that come with Indiependence, as well as the valuable spend in Mitchelstown businesses and hotels, worth an estimated €1.5m to the town, are no more. Festival acts have been forced to hang up their microphones as they socially distance from live events to beat the pandemic.
It has been a tough few months for Shane Dunne, managing director of Indiependence Music & Arts Festival. He set up the event by accident in 2006 after saving the town’s free festival, transforming it into the substantial social gathering it is today.
“It’s hard on a number of levels,” said Dunne. “There’s the basic hardship of income being lost and just trying to survive and look after your family. I’ve a mortgage to pay and need to balance the books.
“This summer was looking like it would be the busiest ever. You are sitting in January worried about running the events, not worried about not making money. That was wiped away in a short period of time.”
Dunne is not the only festival organiser feeling the pinch.
The economic shutdown caused by Covid-19 has been a hammer blow to the live events industry. Everything from music festivals and live gigs to theatre productions, so reliant on the public coming together as one, have been forced into an uncertain future.
According to an industry survey, almost all companies in the events industry, which is responsible for the employment of 35,000 people in Ireland and generates more than €3.5bn for the economy annually, have experienced a significant drop in revenue.
Event Industry Ireland, which carried out the survey, said half of events companies have temporarily laid off staff, while a fifth can only stay afloat for up to three months.
According to Epic, a recently formed industry lobby group, this year could see a 90pc drop in revenue for the live events sector, with the incomes of 92pc of event and arts workers affected.
The lobby group, which is due to meet with the Government to discuss support for the industry, makes the point that many of the companies which supply and support live events are not huge — they are mainly SMEs and skilled sole traders. Workers such as backstage crew, sound engineers, riggers, lighting experts, safety officers and security need the live events industry over the summer to stay afloat.
Pearse Doherty, a former member of the band The Saw Doctors and a former head of production for both Galway 2020 and Aiken Promotions, said the shutdown of festivals across the country had “shaken the roots of what we do”.
“I would say, across the board, the suppliers who employ the people who have the skills have been devastated,” he said. “Our big thing is losing these skills. There are people in this industry that have skills that have taken years to build up, we could come knocking on their door in the future, and those skills could be gone. They might not be there any more.
“Are we ever going to get back to an Electric Picnic with 70,000 people in a field, or Croke Park with 80,000? We don’t know, and that’s the stress of it. No one can define it. This is going to last right into 2021, and it’s going to last a lot longer for some of the SMEs.”
To get the sector through this period, many organisers have called on the insurance companies and banks to help the industry survive.
Sophie Ridley, chair of Epic and an experienced event manager, said companiess had reported issues with both banks and insurers since the onset of the virus in Ireland. She was particularly frustrated, as a large part of the cost of insurance in the industry is related to public liability.
“It is an issue,” she said. “The motor insurance industry and private health insurance have all said ‘Yeah, our risk factor is much less at the moment’, so they are giving rebates and refunds. Our industry hasn’t got that.
“Not only have they not refunded on public liability, we have no public liability risk at the moment as we have no public, we have very little employee liability [as well].
“We do have some equipment insurance risk as all equipment is now warehoused in one place, so that needs to be insured fully,” she added. “So not only are they not playing ball in terms of refunds, our insurance rates for next year have also been quoted much higher.”
Ridley said one equipment company had not only experienced issues with insurance but also with banks. She said the company had been granted two three-month payment breaks on a loan so far this year but had been told these instalments had to be paid back by the end of December, despite there being little to no income coming in.
“A normal industry going back to work pretty much fully now couldn’t begin to do that,” she said. “This is an industry they know has no income.”
With many lenders and insurers failing to back the industry, Ridley called on the Government to help “bridge the sector” to next summer, the golden period for live event organisers.
Anna Marie McHugh, assistant managing director of the National Ploughing Association and general secretary of World Ploughing Organisation, said the Government’s wage subsidy scheme should be extended.
“I definitely think the Covid-19 wage supplement should continue as long as possible for the industry as there is no income whatsoever this year and there are still significant expenses,” she said.
McHugh heads one of the country’s largest events, the National Ploughing Championships, which was set to take place in September. The event, which attracts nearly 300,000 visitors, has been forced to cancel, though there is still hope that the ploughing competition will go ahead.
“The powers-that-be will have to realise that cost versus income will have to be taken into account. If event organisers are asked to spend hundreds of thousands over and above usual expense to meet new regulations that will put the industry at serious risk,” she added.
Organisers are also looking for clarity regarding a reopening. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar recently said there was hope for outdoor events of fewer than 5,000 taking place in September, but industry sources feel a clear roadmap toward this has yet to be published. Dunne said a roadmap, as well as clarity on how social distancing would work at a live event, is badly needed to allow businesses to plan.
However, it is not just financial and regulatory backing the sector needs. Avril Stanley, the founder of music and arts festival Body and Soul, which was due to take place in June near Ballinlough Castle, Co Westmeath, pointed out other measures the Government could help with.
Stanley believes the development of a free track-and-trace application and instant testing would help safeguard attendees. She also feels government grants, not just loans, would help support the promoters, suppliers and artists to survive, as well as reducing Vat to help tide the industry over until the summer boom next year.
“Hope is what orients us all to the future,” she said, “but it is peppered with a lot of trepidation.”
Regardless of the lockdown, many in the industry have innovated to keep their bored punters entertained during social isolation. Some in the industry have talked about the potential for drive-in gigs, online shows and even the potential for smaller events in September as the Government’s restrictions unwind.
Naoise Nunn, a co-founder of Schweppe Curtis Nunn and programme director of Kilkenomics, a Kilkenny festival that combines comedy and economics, plans to run a number of events around October and November.
Nunn said he would be waiting until nearer the time to design the layout of these events, but also planned to use technology to ensure some acts put off by the pandemic could take part.
“It’s a little bit like a slow bicycle race,” he said. “You’re seeing how everybody else is doing, those that are doing festivals earlier than you, how they are doing it and how restrictions are being managed and imposed. You are looking at the regulatory environment, trying to predict where it is going to be in October or November, which is a bit of fools errand because you can get dragged down rabbit holes. We plan to run all the events in Kilkenny as close to normal as possible but bearing in mind a lot of our venues will be at half capacity.
“The likelihood of bringing people in on long-haul flights from the US is unlikely this year. A lot of the programmes will be Europe and Ireland focussed. In the case of Kilkenomics, we may have contributions to panels via video link, rather than in person.
“This is what we live for,” he added. “A lot of people are doing brilliant work driving audiences online to keep the connection going, but I am a producer of live events. That’s where the magic is.”
The use of online technology isn’t for all festival organisers, however. Ray O’Donoghue, festival director of Sea Sessions, a music and surfing festival in Bundoran, Co Donegal, said he had considered online streaming and drive-in gigs, but decided they weren’t the same.
“I just went, ‘What am I doing?’,” he said. “I have been doing live music for over 20 years, why am I even doing this. I took a few weeks off take it all in. Now I’m back at it a week and will be until next year.”
O’Donoghue said he had decided to offer his customers the opportunity to roll their tickets bought for this year’s cancelled event over to next year. The move would have provided some cash flow for his business, potentially helping it get through the tough times ahead.
“Almost half of the tickets for next year, [our customers] held on to them. There is a lot of goodwill out there and love for our festivals.
“It’s important because it means you have a starting point for next year,” he added. “It’s a head start.”
Indiependence’s Dunne also acknowledged the festival had benefited from its loyal fan base in terms of tickets being held for next year. He said 80pc of sales made had been rolled over for the event next year. The move won’t alleviate all the financial pressures he is facing though, as the revenue generated by one festival will be needed to help pay for a second.
“If you spend that money now, then you are starting next year from a minus position,” he said. “That is a risk. Even if you roll over 100pc of your tickets, you will still make a loss this year as you spend money on licensing, marketing and deposits paid for acts that you won’t get back.
“While it is great and I’m delighted so many held on to tickets, it is not a huge help financially as really you shouldn’t be spending it.”
Despite the negativity the organisers feel about this year, they all agree that sunnier times are ahead for the live events industry — particularly next summer should the pandemic pass.
Reflecting on the financial crisis of 2008, Dunne said the sector emerged stronger than ever before, providing him with the confidence it could do so again. While he acknowledged this crisis was different from anything Ireland had ever faced before, he is sure this “resilient sector” will make it through. It just needs people to come together and help.
“As soon as it is safe to do so, or as soon as it is safe to do it at a reduced capacity with help from Government to make up the numbers, this is an industry that will come back pretty quickly,” he said.
“As soon as we can get that roadmap, we will be back. That is just the kind of industry this is.”