The Irresistible Return of Live Events

Photo credit: King County Metro photographer Thomas Hawthorne captured during Welcome Week with the Downtown Seattle Association 07/2021

Let me start by saying I fully support the social distancing restrictions that have been in place, and that not gathering in large groups for the past 2 years has been, in my opinion, the right course of action. Full transparency: it nearly decimated our business, amounting to an 80% loss in revenue in 2020, and a slow claw-back, adapt, pivot (hate that word) in 2021. It also goes without saying that nearly 1 million deaths in the US has been far more tragic than not being able to gather, and the personal and collective sacrifice has been, I believe, absolutely necessary. And…I write this on a day that both nationwide and Seattle covid cases (95% Omicron) have come down 75% from their peak, and are predicted to come down much further in the very short term.

It seems clear that that more and more people and institutions are ready to have a different conversation, and to move to a different set of restrictions and limitations – in public norms, and in their own hearts and minds.

I was thinking “the inevitable return…” would have been better in the title, but instead of talking about the how - new norms, collective agreements, best practices - I wanted to address the why - the urge, the need and the critical importance of coming back together to our collective health. And in this case, I’m focusing on the Live Event Industry – not workplaces, or schools, restaurants or movies. I’m talking about those experience we participate in mostly for the sake of being together.

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest a robust return to live events is anything but inevitable: the only partial re-opening of workplaces; the large percentage of workers deciding that it’s better for them to work at home; the seismic shift of fundraising to virtual (or other methods that aren’t galas). Much of this is what we all had to do (by law or survival necessity for our businesses) during the most dangerous phases of the pandemic. What matters for this discussion is the extent to which we decide to continue behaving that way when neither legal restriction nor survival necessity are any longer at play. To be clear, I’m talking about the survival of our businesses and cultural institutions here, and not ignoring the continued mortal danger of infection for a portion of the population. But I am making the argument that continuing the level of restrictions and the refusal to support public gatherings is at this point doing us more harm than good (especially if politically motivated and mostly “performative”, but that’s a whole other conversation)

That was a long preamble to these propositions: live events are in fact going to come back with abandon; they can help meet some deep collective and individual needs (healing trauma is not too strong a phrase), and; we in the industry have an opportunity to deeply reflect on what values we bring to this work, and to engage new criteria for success.

Two years of distance and isolation has messed with our social skills and the practice of connecting with others. How might we bring attention to empathy and intimacy to our events? And by that, I mean qualities of kindness, generosity of spirit, and sensitivity to the gentle onramp that might be needed for people to feel delighted by (and not just safe in) connecting with others. It may mean more time and different structures for the informal parts of events, perhaps designing different kinds interactivity that provide some “guardrails” for connecting.

I can imagine agoraphobia in returning to large groups gatherings. How might we increase the opportunity for depth, for hearing each other’s stories, for minimizing overwhelm? For many communities and organizations, large gatherings have always provided a sense of social home, of being in our tribe. Talk about something that is essential to our sense of psychological well being! Research suggests that modern humans, just like 30,000 years ago, can manage somewhere in the range of 125 close relationships. Since we’ve clearly NOT been able to be with (most of) our larger tribe of late, it's interesting to think about what we might do to turn our events into really good medicine? In order to give each other a felt experience of that comfort zone, what changes in space design, décor, seating arrangements, size of stages, and length of segments might we consider to reduce the sense of being amidst a disquietingly large crowd?

In the hosting, scripting, curating, directing and design work that we’re engaged in, I feel challenged to help construct and lead events with a new attention to narrative, to beauty, and…stay with me…to ritual. Narrative for the sake of telling the story of our shared values, our hopes and dreams, the very mythic importance of what we’re about. Beauty for the healing of the body and soul – for the endorphins, the dopamine and the oxytocin of it all, the sense of love, of pleasure in the world. Beauty for the sake of reminding us of what matters, of meaning. And ritual because we can create our events with care and deep attention to the user experience - in the sequence, the language we use to guide attendees, the punctuation of beginnings and endings, the production values that make things “pop”, the guests’ sense of being led through an experience by people who care about them, so that they leave feeling fuller than when they came, and somehow more able to bring that into the world.

That’s why I’m excited about the return of live events, and to all of us bringing our hopefulness, adaptability and leadership to their design. Our gatherings need to be reimagined, and created, with the care and genius that reflects how much they matter! They’re not extra, not nice-to-haves – they define us, and ground us in our communities. They are gotta-haves. So here we go…let’s nail this!

See you soon…and SO looking forward to it. - Kevin Joyce