After last week’s concert-in-presence experiment in Barcelona, attended by 5,000 people, a major revival of live events is expected, as a reaction to the long period of pandemic
The news bounced around the media last week: in Barcelona 5,000 people participated in a live concert at the Palau de Sant Jordi. An experiment followed directly by a medical team and regulated by a protocol: antigenic test, but then everyone under stage with a mask but without social distancing. The concert was held without any particular incident and, after more than a year, has raised the hopes of the public and organizers that the big events can return to be a reality as early as next summer.
A hope also highlighted by the study of Epson, assisted by Professor Steven Taylor *, a true authority on the pandemic issue, on what has been called a post-traumatic growth, or a surge in participation in live events that is expected to take place at the end of the health emergency. The survey, conducted in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the UK, found that “the vast majority of people are eager to resume their pre-pandemic social lives, which includes participation in experiential live events. This underscores the fact that people are ready and that most will return to pre-pandemic levels of socialization, regardless of how they feel right now. […] In fact, when people do recover, I expect there will be a brief period of hyper-sociality, sort of a repeat we might say of what happened in the post-war periods in the 1920s. Live events will play an important role in this context.” And again, “[…] People are currently in a state of ‘pandemic fatigue’, feeling stressed and some suffering from minimal forms of depression that introduce a level of negative bias when thinking about their future plans. As a result, it is likely that people are overestimating their anxiety about attending events. Some people may be anxious the first or second time they go to an event, but their anxieties are likely to dissipate quickly. Most people will recover. This is what has happened in the past and it will happen again.”
And you, would you be ready, as a spectator or as a professional, to take part in an experiment like the one in Barcelona? In the meantime, you can read the detail of Epson’s study here
* Professor Steven Taylor is a world authority on the impact of pandemics on human social behavior. In October 2019, he published a book titled Psychology of Pandemics https://www.drsteventaylor.com/books and gave Ted talks on the psychological impact of Covid.
