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Circus Music

Live music is back in Liverpool

The light at the end of the tunnel for live shows is coming into focus with an eager eleven thousand music fans enjoying two club nights and gig with no social distancing or masks. Over the bank holiday weekend these groups of Liverpudlians were able to stand closer than two metres from a stranger, hug their mates, and revel in live music with no restrictions. This wasn’t an illegal rave, but a series of events organised as part of the UK Government's Event Research Programme.

Circus nightclub hosted ‘The First Dance’ with a stellar line-up spanning two nights, featuring classic crowd pleaser Fatboy Slim, and technical wizard The Blessed Madonna. It was an amazing opportunity to dance again with six thousand other clubbers. To gain entry, ticket holders simply had to take a lateral flow test before attending the experiment, live within the Liverpool City Region, and submit a PCR test five days later. 

To top the bank holiday off, Blossoms headlined a gig at Sefton Park to five thousand music lovers. Support on the day came from hotly tipped band The Lathums and Liverpool’s very own Zuzu. We have fond memories of Blossoms and Zuzu both playing the Jägerhaus not too long ago. The event was produced by Festival Republic in conjunction with Culture Liverpool. The findings from the events should provide the scientific team with a wealth of data and will hopefully pave the way for future events.


“We’re one step closer to a summer of live events now our science-led programme is under way.” - Oliver Dowden, Culture Secretary

The Event Research programme aims to explore the risk of transmission and the effectiveness of measures such as ventilation and testing for large scale events. After the success of the mass testing trial in Liverpool that took the city from tier three to tier two, it was the perfect location to trial live events. According to Culture Liverpool, 48% of Liverpool’s economy comes from the visitor economy. Therefore, just like in so many other cities, it’s essential they reopen the night-time economy as planned on 21st June. 

Other events taking place as part of the trial have included The Good Business Festival, where four hundred guests gathered to shake hands and rub shoulders, the Snooker World Championships at the Crucible Theatre seeing Mark Selby victorious to a full house, and several reduced capacity football games at Wembley. Later this month The BRIT awards will take place with an unmasked audience of four thousand, of which over half will be key workers.

If you are anything like the FRUKT team you’ll be unbelievably jealous of everyone who had the chance to experience something so many of us have craved for over a year. We can only hope that this paves the way to the return of live music very soon.