TRNSMT boss not yet ready to rule out event taking place in summer
THE boss of one of Scotland’s biggest music festivals has said it’s too soon to start cancelling events planned for the summer. Geoff Ellis, from DF Concerts, was speaking after a senior civil servant warned that it would likely be another bleak year for the sector.
Paul Bush, who runs EventScotland, said the events industry was “becoming increasingly resigned” to the reality that festivals and venues would not be able to operate normally.
He told Scotland on Sunday: “I’m trying to be honest, realistic and pragmatic. There’s a long way to go. We don’t really know where we are yet. People have to be patient.
“Over the next four to six weeks, we will hopefully get some indications of the impacts of the vaccine roll-out, the lockdown restrictions, how we are managing the variants of the virus. However, even though the number of cases have gone down significantly over the last week, the number of deaths that are being recorded are still horrifying.
“The grim reality is that if you get sick, you’re in trouble. Bringing together thousands and thousands of people in close-knit environments, the virus loves it.
“Everybody in the industry would love to have a crystal ball, but we just don’t have it. It would be wrong of me to tell people they’re going to have full venues because we just don’t know that.”
Ellis, whose TRNSMT festival is due to be held in Glasgow this July, said it was too soon to write off the summer: “Everyone appreciates that it is not safe to re-open right now.
“The summer is still months away yet and it is really encouraging to see just how fast the governments are rolling out the vaccines programme.
“We’re pretty much leading the way globally on the vaccine rollout, and hearing reports that the adult population could potentially be vaccinated by May gives the whole events industry cautious confidence that all hope for the summer is not yet lost.”
A number of major UK events have already cancelled plans for summer.
Speaking at the Scottish Government’s daily coronavirus briefing last month, First Minister Nicola
Sturgeon said she thought it unlikely there’d be any return to normality for Scotland’s large-scale events this year.
She said: “The honest answer would be no, I can’t say that with certainty.
“I hope, just like everybody else hopes, that by then we will have restored a lot of normality to life, but you know we equally have to be realistic and pragmatic.”