Health and safety

No one wants music festivals to be dangerous events, but is there now a risk that health and safety regulations are stifling creativity?

The safety issue of live music events was brought to the public's attention in 2000 when nine fans were crushed to death in front of the stage at the Roskilde festival in Denmark.

Glastonbury

This event, along with an estimated 100,000 gate crashers at Glastonbury 2000 led Michael Eavis to take a year off from running the festival in order to re-evaluate safety and festival security and design a new fence: one that can't be taken apart, climbed over, or tunnelled under. It worked pretty well but now Eavis has taken even further precautions against gate crashers and ticket touts, with the new photo registration for tickets.

The Pop Code

Mass gatherings for live music have generated bad press recently over safety issues - violence at the Notting Hill Carnival has raised concerns within the Greater London Authority and the Met Police about their ability to provide effective policing at cultural events.

Festival organisers face strict legislation and licence regulations for outdoor events, including standards for environmental health and public safety (incorporated in The 1999 Pop Code) while pub landlords also have many rules and regulations to obey. Many free events are falling by the wayside as they become more hassle than they are worth.

The Events Safety Guide

Following the accident with the rock band The Who in Cincinnati, USA in 1979, where 11 young people were killed, an investigation was launched which marked the beginning of internationally recognised strategies for crowd management. The Castle Donnington accident in the UK in 1988, where two young men were crushed to death at the large open-air festival, led the British Home Office to initiate the writing of the first edition of The Event Safety Guide. Produced by a cooperative effort between the concert and festival industry, the British Home Office and the British Health and Safety Council, the guide was first published in 1993. The guide, commonly known as the Pop Code, was revised in 1999 and covers all factors of risk for events whether one-night gigs or 10-day rock festivals.

Risk assessment

Risk assessment forms are lengthy affairs where event organisers have to evaluate the likelihood of every possible hazard and possible ways of prevention for crowds of up to 150,000. Possible risks vary depending upon the event and the weather. Different musical genres bring with them different safety problems, from the drug users dehydrating at dance events to the crowd surfing and mosh-pit culture of heavy metal fans.

Wet weather brings with it problems of the crowd slipping on the mud and people getting trampled, while sunshine brings sunstroke, fainting and more dehydration. Risks that events officers are most wary of are people being crushed in front of the stage, or trying to get in and out of the event, especially out as everyone suddenly surges in the same direction.

Have we gone too far?

Author of many books on risk, most notably Culture of Fear: Risk Taking and the Morality of Low Expectations in 1997, sociologist Frank Furedi believes we are overly preoccupied with safety and risk. A lecturer of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, Furedi's fear is that a society organised around the premise of risk aversion will become an increasingly conservative and irrational one: for the only way to overcome ignorance is to experiment, and if that is ruled out he feels we will be 'trapped in a mode of social paralysis.'

He believes increasingly strict health and safety regulations are perfect examples to show that: "We are too obsessed with risk evaluation and safety precautions today and unfortunately there is much more to come. Once busy bodies start regulating how we have fun there is an irresistible urge to put safety to the for. It will inevitably get worse, you only have to look at the US to see how far things have gone."