As you will have seen from some press reports, the Government’s Event Research Programme (ERP) has been operational for much of this month and has now concluded. I produced one of the shows; The Sefton Park Pilot. It totally confirmed what was missing in my life at the moment: the joy of being in a field with like-minded people enjoying music and life. Unconfirmed reports suggest, that of the 58,000 people that attended pilot/test events, only 15 cases of infections were reported. While I cannot confirm that, I can confirm that to a very large extent, the 6,100 ticket buyers at the Sefton Park show had reported cases proportionate to those numbers despite almost every attendee being under the age profile of being offered vaccines. I believe it was a massive success and demonstrated there is a way to produce festivals in a Covid safe manner.
You may also have just seen our exciting news that we will be running a second pilot show event for them, this time a 10,000 person camping event at Donington Park, as part of the second phase of the ERP. I see this as confirmation that they believe in the June 21st date just as much as the Prime Minister does and just as much as I do. That’s also why I today have the confidence to talk about our new headline partner, cinch. cinch believes that Latitude can happen this year just as much as I do and to that end I will be releasing the line up tomorrow at 10am. The summer is coming. ?
Melvin