Health, Safety and Social Distancing at Festivals

About the event

The session aimed at bringing together senior leadership from the festivals sector in India to look at health and safety and examine the way forward. Leading the session were three experts from the world of cultural events — Andrew Jones, Senior Manager, Theatre and Dance from the British Council UK; V. Ravichandar, Honorary Director, Bangalore International Center, and Rohan Oberoi, CEO and Founder, Momentum India.

The three speakers started the session with five-minute presentations each. Ravichandar spoke of setting standards around health and safety at festivals. He took examples from B-SAFE, a collective he initiated to create SOP for cultural venues in his hometown Bengaluru. Andrew spoke of creating socially distanced experiences, taking festival examples from the UK and their challenges. Rohan, with more than 15 years of experience in the field of health and safety, and as one of the market leaders for providing health and safety solutions to the event industries in India, delved into many of the practical challenges the festivals sector could potentially face. He also set broad frameworks to address these challenges and to continue being active through the period.

The session then broke out into three smaller groups in breakout rooms where each of these topics were discussed in detail in the form of peer to peer interaction. These participants, carefully chosen by the team, comprised festival directors, festival managers, curators, chief operating officers, production heads, and vice presidents from festival producing businesses, who actively interacted with each other.

The digital session was held as part of the British Council’s Festival Connections, in partnership with Arts and Culture Resources India (an Art X Company initiative) and the Art X Company, an annual programme of expertise, knowledge and networking between India and the UK.