In accordance with the Government confirmation allowing outdoors events to go ahead, and after close consultation with both SAGE and Bristol Council, Bristol Craft Beer Festival safely welcomed over 2500 visitors for a series of ticketed sessions across three days, 9th – 11th September, on site at Bristol Harbourside.
Despite the challenges of putting on a festival in the current climate, the team behind Bristol Craft Beer Festival put in place a number of additional procedures to create a COVID safe environment for visitors. Attendees were invited to be part of the festival on tables of no more than 6. They also implemented a strict one-way system that kept all movement to a minimum.
In order to maximise safety, there were a number of additional elements to the festival, including the development of an app that directly pinpointed the individual to a table to ensure the most accurate tracking possible.
Over 250 litres of hand-sanitizer were used across the weekend with sanitizer points located at the entrance and across the site, whilst over 6000 litres of beer were consumed by happy visitors!
Doing their part for the environment, 2500kg of mixed waste was collected over the 3-day event, with 0% going into landfill. The festival was seen to pave the way for other outdoor festivals in the UK.
We Are Beer and Bristol Craft Beer Festival co-creator Greg Wells said of the event:
“We are incredibly proud to have hosted one of the first physically distanced live outdoor festival events in the UK post lockdown. Despite strict safety regulations we were still able to host fantastic international and local breweries, had some fantastic female DJs from Saffron Records spinning the decks, and all whilst supporting the local hospitality industry. We want to thank everyone who came along, the council for their support and a big thanks to the returning breweries. It has been a long time coming for an event like this and was a great success.
“We took safety very seriously and put in as many steps in as possible to make the event physically distanced, but also a sense of audience amongst the crowd. We followed all Government Guidelines with regards to Covid-19 safety. We provided everyone with their own glass for the event, allocated seating, temperatures tests, track and trace and extra sanitation of the washroom areas.”
Author: Adam Parry
Adam is the co-founder and editor of www.eventindustrynews.com Adam, a technology evangelist also organises Event Tech Live, Europe’s only show dedicated to event technology and the Event Technology Awards. Both events take place in November, London.
