Complicated? It’s what we do

Mike Fletcher stood-in as Editor of Exhibition News for the September issue. This is his Editor’s Letter…..

Setting aside for a moment the economic impact, number of mothballed jobs and the fact that major venues have served as Nightingale Hospitals, I do still find it odd that exhibitions will pretty much be the last form of organised gatherings to get the government green-light to restart. Exhibitions and football crowds. 

Currently, football supporters will be capped at 30% of a ground’s capacity from 1 October, regardless of stadium design, transport links and infection rates. The Premier League is challenging this, insisting that the technology to allow for the introduction of fan clinical passports is available and it shouldn’t be penalised just because other sports can’t implement it. 

Exhibitions on the other hand, already have a tried and tested track-and-trace mechanic in place - it’s called registration. On page 26, Andrew Evans, MD of Thorough Events confesses that his determination for going ahead with London Concours was born of frustration that public markets were allowed to function with no control over who attends and which stands people visit, whilst exhibitions with all their tracking technology were not. 

The commonality between the return of football fans and exhibitions restarting is that they both fall within the remit of the DCMS - a government department that apparently opposes fan clinical passports on the basis it could ‘prove too complicated’.

Complicated is pivoting from a live show environment to a virtual event one at lightning speed. Complicated is planning for business survival whilst being ignored by a Prime Minister who presided over the London 2012 Olympics and who we thought knew our value. Complicated is convincing exhibitors that visitors will return to do business face-to-face, whilst putting contingency plans in place should localised lockdowns scupper restarts. 

Venues, whether they’re state-of-the-art stadia or exhibition centres, do complicated. Organisers of all types of exhibitions and events, do complicated. We need to keep telling government that they’ve left the best until last.