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Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, chief executive at music
industry trade body UK Music, said event organisers needed a
date for when live music could resume and also for the
government to back an insurance policy in case the pandemic
caused new cancellations.
Ranging from Glastonbury, the world's largest greenfield
festival, to events dedicated to opera, folk, rock and
everything in between, live music contributed 1.3 billion pounds
($1.8 billion) directly to the British economy in 2019, UK Music
said.
Njoku-Goodwin said it might seem strange to talk about saving
the summer in January as infections spiralled and England went
into a new national lockdown.
"But actually summer is meant to be the moment where our country
is going to bounce back from this pandemic," he told Reuters.
"The music industry can play a huge role in that post-pandemic
recovery."
"So we are asking for an indicative date from government saying
when we can restart again safely as an industry, but also asking
for an insurance scheme from government underwritten by
government that will help insure events, so that if they are
cancelled there'll be some sort of compensation," he said.
RACE AGAINST TIME
Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis told the BBC last month the
festival was doing everything it could but it was "still quite a
long way" from being confident 2021 would go ahead.
She tweeted on Monday: "There's no news this end yet, we haven't
cancelled. Will let you know right here as soon as we have an
update."
Njoko-Goodwin said it was a race against time: "We have a matter
of weeks in which we can actually convince major events to hold
off cancelling."
In a statement, Britain's Department for Digital, Culture, Media
and Sport said it was "working flat out" to support the live
events sector.
"Our 1.57 billion pound Culture Recovery Fund has already seen
more than 1 billion pounds offered to arts, heritage and
performance organisations to support them through the impact of
the pandemic, protecting tens of thousands of creative jobs
across the UK...," a spokeswoman said.
($1 = 0.7341 pounds)
(Writing by Paul Sandle)
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