Effective Crowd Control and Social Distancing Strategies for Events
Learn practical tips for managing crowd control and social distancing at events, including layout design, enforcement methods, and communication strategies.
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Crowd control How to manage distance at an event
Added on 10/01/2024
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Speaker 1: And then my last question before I'll let you go, because I can imagine you're busy, is I wanted to quickly ask, I'm assuming, I wanted to quickly ask about crowd control. That's another issue that, and you know, managing social distancing at events, if you had any tips or advice when it comes to handling crowd control and where to even start when you kind it's thinking about your layout or your event design in your space.

Speaker 2: I know, right? Okay. So there are some great guidelines about how much square footage you need to have per person for capacity. And that is rapidly changing as people started to say, Hey, outdoors, you can do this type of capacity and indoors, you can't. No. So, but there are some great, there are some great calculations as far as what you need to do, what it used to be before people started. Well, when I say used to be what it was in, let's say January was 113 square feet per person inside, outside, whatever that may be. It is changing. But that one is a good example of what it used to be. Once you then ensure that you have enough space for people, it's the reality of, okay, how do we make them pay attention to that though? And there is a certain level of, you have to, you know, let it go. You know, you have to decide how you want to enforce that. So there are, we have seen, you know, the pods marked on the ground. We have seen, you know, in stadiums where they have the seats that fold up, you know, literally sort of locked into place. So people can't move around. So they bought a two ticket pod and that's how many people can sit in this row or section. We've seen a lot of that. And again, you have to determine how you intend to enforce it. COVID compliance officers, I don't know if you're familiar. I think most people are now, but they kind of came to us from the film industry where they were monitoring sets. I'm sure they will eventually be called something else for events beyond COVID compliance officer or CCO, but I'm just gonna use that term right now. And a CCO is really helpful and a CCO staff just to kind of walk around and gently remind people, hey, you agreed to this. You will be, or hey, you need to get a part or are you guys in the same household? Things like that. I also recommend giving people signals within kind of in their own crowd. And what I mean with that is I always think of the example of a music festival and you think about that and you say, okay, it's a wide open space outdoors. Let's pretend. And it's very easy to have sections for people that are feeling comfortable and great and want to squish in together a little bit closer and people that are really uncomfortable and want to be back a little further, giving them their own area and people that may have, maybe even more uncomfortable than that, or identifying them somehow with a wristband that says, I'm just really not comfortable with this yet. Stay away from me.

Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great idea. A wristband, the color coding.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So color coding that and letting people kind of determine where they want to be in that. Yeah. And you try your darndest, there will be people that will break it. And you do your best to kind of provide them what they can do and remind them of their obligations. And then it goes back to your identity, who do you as a festival want to be? Do you want to say, hey, if I have to warn you literally once, I will kick you out. If I have to warn you endlessly, I will do that. We will take that on. So it's kind of up to you to decide how you want to do that enforcement. But giving people, I think giving some people the ability to really choose their own adventure, as it were, in a crowd will make

Speaker 1: this easier. Yeah. And that's when I think communication prior to the event is so important, whether it's on your registration page or your marketing material, letting them know what type of event it's going to be. If it's going to be, okay, we're extra cautious, we're going to be separating you like this, or it's going to be more relaxed, or you'll have the option to have the wristband and color code it. I think that the communication prior to the event and just do it like months out, leading up to your event and constantly so people know, and they understand how the event's going to be prior before they get there. So either they're not afraid or they're not confused when they get there and someone's telling them, hey,

Speaker 2: you need to watch your space. Yeah. And be consistent in that communication. Don't change it up on them because we all know every time CDC changes something for us, we get confused. So imagine how they feel then having to drill down into just this one particular event. There's also, you mentioned you were looking at the resources on our site. I don't know if we still have it up. I actually don't remember. But we used to have something up noting a social responsibility pledge. Have you heard of those? No, actually. They're very interesting. And that is a way to, you can do this both with employees as well as with your audience. Employees gets into a whole thing about their legal contract, etc. So I will talk about this just sort of focused on the audience. But it's not a legal binding agreement. But we can make them sign a social responsibility pledge noting, I know what the rules are. I'm reading this right now. And I'm acknowledging it. And I'm saying I'm going to do you know, I agree to do all of this on here to make everybody here feel safe to share this experience with them. It does make it a little bit easier and enforcement simply. Yeah, you signed this. Yeah. And then you put signs of it all over the place. And you can remind folks, hey, remember, we talked about this, like, you just make sure Oh, yeah, it is just, they're not purposely trying to break it and just forget, or it's just not, you know, we're all learning this new way to be out in the world. We're all a little weird right now. So it's just allowing people to remind you, you know, Oh, right, you're right. I did say that. Great. Thanks. I did see that. Thank you.

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