Festival season is still in doubt but Latitude has been given the green light as part of the government pilot scheme.
Latitude Festival has confirmed that their event will be going ahead at full capacity as part of the UK government’s Event Research Programme (ERP).
Now, Latitude Festival will see 35,000 music fans attend its grounds at Henham Park from July 22nd-25th, with headline performances from Wolf Alice, The Chemical Brothers, Bastille, and Bombay Bicycle Club.
Gaining entry to the festival you will require proof of a negative lateral flow test taken within 48 hours of arriving at the festival or proof of full vaccination with the second dose having been received at least 14 days prior.
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Originally tweeted by Latitude Festival (@LatitudeFest) on June 25, 2021.
Speaking on the announcement Festival Director Melvin Benn said: “We have been working extremely hard to make sure that Latitude Festival can go ahead safely at full capacity. Becoming an ERP event gives us the security of going ahead. Crucially the additional research collected at Latitude will benefit all festivals and live events moving forward. Everyone will be welcome to attend as long as they have a negative lateral flow test or proof of two vaccinations.” Adding: “After many months without live music and arts, we are ecstatic to return with a full capacity festival. Restarting festivals is crucially important to the wellbeing of everyone in society and we hope that Latitude will be the first of many festivals to take place this summer!”
However, this is good news and it is great to see a festival actually going ahead this year, it still feels that the UK government has missed the mark. There have been countless cancellations, including Glastonbury, Truck Festival, and Boomtown (to name a few). If we’re going to be looking at a summer of festivals, we only have two months to make this happen. It seems very unlikely, and you can’t help think about what these pilot events will actually do overall, especially for events wanting to go ahead this year.
Recently it was announced that the live music industry will be taking legal action against the government, due to them hesitating to release the data from previous events, a legal case that Andrew Lloyd Webber has joined. There were also protests held in London over the weekend which aimed to highlight the Government’s failings in opening up the live music sector, this was accompanied by a #saveourscene hashtag.
The Government has announced that the test event data will be published “shortly”.
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