It’s time for event security to be seen as a sector in its own right, Emma Parkinson tells Mark Rowe.
A fashionable eating place in Bath (is there any other sort?!) was the venue for Professional Security to meet Emma Parkinson. She’s a recent addition to the Bucks New University staff, a senior lecturer in crowd safety management. She has not missed a Glastonbury since 1992. If you’re the sort who thinks of Glastonbury as a small town in Somerset, that might not sound like much, or even make sense, but it goes to show the sheer enthusiasm out there for live events. Professional Security first met her a few years ago when she became stewarding manager for Oxfam. Did you know that the charity is one of the UK’s largest providers of event stewards? With 2500 at the Glastonbury festival alone? Like other Bucks New teachers (and in fairness like others at other unis), she’s not simply an academic. She’s still doing event work in her summers, partly to keep on top of the subject, but plainly because she likes the life. It’s not a life for every manager: sleeping in a tent, or maybe a caravan, dashing to the next incident, maybe having to cut short your break, and pushing a half-eaten sausage roll in your jacket pocket, that you evidently never had time to finish … because you find it later. While you could say event security and event management in general is a young person’s life, or at least for those young at heart, that’s not strictly true; it’s more true to point to the sheer breadth of events in the UK, whether ‘proms in the park’ or open-air films in midsummer at stately homes, for the middle-aged and middle-class, or music festivals such as Download and Glastonbury, or events with audiences that defy classifying by age or class, such as the new year’s eve fireworks in London, and Hogmanay in Edinburgh.
Is it fair then to say that Britain has a good reputation in putting on events, for their security and in general? “Absolutely, for several reasons. We do have these global-scale events that have enable us to demonstrate best practice in the field. The practitioners in this field take it really seriously. It isn’t just seen as an adjunct to policing and security, it’s studied as a discipline in its own right by people who really care about good outcomes. And we are seeing that in that our practitioners are required all over the world now.” A reason for meeting Emma was Crowd Science, the new book by Keith Still, featured in the October issue. As Emma pointed out, he’s worked (besides on such UK events as the 2011 royal wedding) on a re-design of the hajj pilgrimage, which every year brings gigantic crowds to Mecca. She names also the Bucks New graduate Jim Fidler, working in Australia on crowd safety at such events as Big Day Out. As a sign of how events are a world of their own, event people do have a habit of simply naming events that some may never have heard of; in this case Big Day Out is an annual festival that tours Australia and New Zealand. That said, it’s striking how events are a part of everyday life. Just take some of the news in the week Professional Security met Emma. Mayor of London Boris Johnson proposed to charge people to watch the new year fireworks. Such ticketing will regulate crowd numbers. And a workman fell through the roof at the London Fashion Show; the show went on.
And as Emma stressed, there are many more names, bringing professionalism to the event industry. Beforehand Professional Security asked her to define event security; she answered in terms of what made it different from other strands of security management. Besides the breadth of live events, you need subtlety to handle situations. Events are, in a word, dynamic; you cannot ask everyone to freeze while you decide what’s best to do, any more than the organisers of the London Olympics could ask for the opening night to be put back, to give time to iron out wrinkles. And – as Hillsborough and the Bradford fire and other fires and crowd crushes show – situations can escalate fast. As indeed Keith Still’s book shows. “If you work in this business you have to recognise those signs of escalation and you have to be able to respond to them appropriately, to calm a situation down, rather than inadvertently making something far worse. It’s a very integrated role, event security. You aren’t just rowing your own boat, you are dealing with the needs of production, of customer care, safety considerations, as well as security considerations; you are helping creatives make remarkably seamless experiences for customers. These things are increasingly in demand.” And here she gave the example of the recent ‘Back to the Future’ screenings in London. Cinema-goers not only got to watch the 1980s film starring Michael J Fox; the organisers built a set, so that customers too could go ‘back to the future’. The ‘secret cinema’ event became more than a screening of a movie; it was a performance. As Emma said, security then has to be subtle, so as not to spoil what makes the event special.
Another question Professional Security put beforehand was the difference between stewarding and security. As Emma said, there’s the legal definition of what’s a licensable activity under the Private Security Industry Act 2001, such as access to licensed premises (door security), cash in transit or close protection. Readers may recall that the football world saw off an effort by the Security Industry Authority to bring stadium stewards under the SIA regime. Emma, though, asks that stewarding is not seen as the ‘lesser relation of security, but a tool in the armoury’. “I have come from a stewarding background,” she recalls; having run Oxfam’s stewards for three years, ‘and we had 8500 really committed volunteers’. To briefly describe what Oxfam offers, to event promoters and its stewards; the typical volunteer does shifts at Glastonbury, for example (to recap, the huge summer festival in Somerset) and in return when not on shift (or asleep) the volunteer can enjoy the show like anyone else. As Emma explains, such a steward can offer customer service because the steward knows what it’s like, to be an event-goer; he or she is typically of the same age and dress as the customers that have come for help, whether because they’re lost or they want to report a stolen phone. Like any other workforce stewards need training and managing, ‘but the hope is that they are there to augment an experience, and if integrated effectively in the security concept, you can achieve great things’. For instance Oxfam works with the event security contractor Showsec (whose MD Mark Harding was interviewed in Professional Security earlier this year) at Bestival, the Isle of Wight festival in early September that traditionally rounds off the UK summer event season. And with the Bristol-based contractor Green Event Security, at Glastonbury and Boom Town, a seven-year-old summer event near Winchester. While Glastonbury like any festival not only has to integrate security with police and ambulance and buses and traffic management, it has more than one security contractor to co-ordinate, given its sheer size (perhaps a lesson London 2012 should have learned from beforehand?!). Not two events are alike; Boom Town is intriguing for its various themed stages, such as ‘Wild West’, where you can listen to such music as hillbilly and cowpunk (not something you would expect to find in Professional Security – whatever it is?!). Again, stewarding and security has to be in keeping with the audience, which after all has paid to be there to enjoy itself, to immerse itself in the event. To sum up, then, stewards in Emma’s words ‘are not just the cheap option, but they can bring something to the event’. She gives the example of camp-sites; security patrols are for public safety, to offer a reassuring presence and to prevent thefts from (and of) tents, whereas stewards also patrolling are more of a friendly, approachable face to pass on useful advice, whether about where to report a theft or where best to find a taxi when leaving at festival’s end.
Readers might say, it’s all very well to learn about Boom Town, or other events where people dress up outlandishly, but what’s it got to do with my job in a shopping centre, or bank? Malls looking for new revenue streams may put on events, such as Christmas light switch-ons or fashion catwalks; corporates may hire musicians, as indeed security shows such as IFSEC and Counter Terror Expo have in recent years, to please clients or staff. Things can go wrong; take the Christmas appearance in Birmingham in 2009 by the boy band JLS, that saw dozens injured. Bucks New intend to take their crowd management students to a shopping centre, where they will have to plan for a Christmas lights-style event. Trainer and Bucks New lecturer Andy Hollinson has experience in that non-traditional field. As other sectors see the success of events, and how it’s good to associate your brand with an event, expect more non-traditional events, such as pop concerts or firework shows at sports stadia.
Does the security manager at such places bring in an event security specialist, or manage the event by himself with his guard force? To do it well, Emma thinks you have to be a specialist. In her words, at an event you do not want security to be ‘the thing that breaks the mirror’; that spoils the party. You don’t want customers afterwards remembering security as too heavy-handed or slow. Just as no two events are alike, so at every event has new things every year – even something as plain as where the toilet block is. Newcomers have to learn the ropes, or even the etiquette of being at an event and watching a band safely, while surrounded by tens of thousands of other enthusiasts. Emma says that the Bucks New crowd management course is looking to encourage students to look at guidelines as only working so far. For instance, it’s generally safe, though it has to be managed, for the keenest fans to be so tight at the front of a crowd, beside the stage, that they cannot budge for hours. They accept that’s the price of being closest to their heroes, and if they feel faint or dehydrated, stewards can pull them out (and take them to first aid – not somewhere back stage, in case customers seek to be pulled out for such a privilege). Likewise, festival crowds will move from one stage to the next, and may form a crush if too many decide they want to attend a fashionable new band that’s inside a fairly small tent. If the ground is churned underfoot into mud by recent rain, or too many in the crowd are unfamiliar with the lay-out, or are craning their neck to look for mates, what might otherwise be a safe density of people could turn dangerous. And as tragedies such as Hillsborough showed, as traced by Keith Still in his book, an incident can in no time reach a turning point when it’s too late for a management decision to prevent injuries or deaths. Part of the event manager’s job, Emma says, is interpreting legislation and guidance – because only football (after such tragedies as Hillsborough) has specific, statutory, crowd safety regulation.
Event managers also have to profile the audience, to understand how it might behave. How, if at all, will an audience respond to uniformed staff? Does the audience know their way round the venue, or will some try to leave the way they came in, even if it makes a jam? Event security, then, can never stand still, because audiences do not stand still. Even if a pop group such as Oasis keeps its same audience, the fans are ageing – will they bring their children with them?! Given that pop stars are performing into old age, do their elderly fans need tender care, when finding their way to their seats?! As Emma stresses, if you are working out how to handle such movements of crowds, as they happen, it’s too late. You have to plan beforehand, and have command and control. For it’s not enough to have CCTV and radios and a control room (Hillsborough had all of those in 1989); you have to get timely messages about incidents to your management, who send their instructions to the stewards and security officers on the ground. And yes, you do paperwork. It’s that planning, Emma suggests, that sets some event security companies apart.
Event organisers can do much, such as posting information pre-event online. Such as, suggesting that if event-goers have gadgets they really don’t want stolen, they should leave them at home or locked in their car. As Emma says, there’s a balance to be struck, being friendly, in your online advice and face to face, while giving instructions, because what to one event-goer might be fun, might spoil another’s experience. And those doing event stewarding and security have to be flexible. Whereas at a shopping mall the units are the same, even if new retailers move in and out all the time, one week the event security manager is working at a festival for families, the next for hippies, and the one after for black t-shirt wearing heavy metal fans. The security tone for one event – or even the same well-meant advice to wear sun cream if it’s sunny – might backfire at the other two.
Professional Security suggested that it was remarkable that those fields full of insecure tents at big events don’t have more thefts. Emma replied: “The audience is largely there to enjoy the event; they are there with their friends,” and police and security firms do work to prevent neer-do-wells arriving, and to identify trouble-makers inside, and remove them. It’s a matter of public record, and part of the folklore of Glastonbury, that some without tickets (or simply as a lark) will try to get under or over the festival’s perimeter, to enter for free. As Emma adds, that you don’t hear about massive problems at these events, is testament to the success of the security work.
“We are becoming a nation of events. We are famous for world-class events, and that’s in no small part due to the fact that we do them spectacularly well. We create world-class spectacles while keeping it extremely safe.” People have an appetite for events – take the new year fireworks at midnight in London, secured by Show and Event Security. There you have people excited, maybe having had something to drink, and perhaps not familiar with London. When London’s new year’s party is ticketed, that will raise the issue of access from unticketed streets to the ticketed central area. Likewise Oxfam stewards and Green Event Security work on the gates of Glastonbury, where access control means giving passes to those who want to come out for a while, checking workers and suppliers are meant to come in, and keeping the unticketed out – and always in the open air, whatever the weather.
To turn to the Bucks New foundation degree in crowd management, it’s striking how some experienced managers are seeking qualifications, whether to make themselves more employable in other event fields, or simply to learn from others, whether their employer pays for the course, or they have to fund it themselves. Students – and tutors – have had roles at such events as London 2012 and the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Emma worked at five shows in summer 2014, including Glastonbury – ‘one of the best parties on the planet’ – and the Burning Man in Nevada, ‘because it’s important that I keep on top of industry practice. We have a good variety of tutors on our course who can make it real for students, and I think our students really appreciate that.’ She was looking after the control room for Oxfam at the Bearded Theory festival at Catton Hall in south Derbyshire, also the venue for the very different Bloodstock heavy metal festival; and a new event, Once Upon A Time in the West (that’s Wiltshire, rather than Nevada). Even that short list shows the sheer thriving variety of summer festivals, that all need securing, as thousands, even tens of thousands, of people come together with only a ticket and the wish to enjoy themselves in common. Emma enjoys the fact that the British festival-goer will keep cheerful, rain or shine; though it does require the security set-up to plan for resilience. For instance, staff have to move around a site, and drive safely if they are in charge of a vehicle – even if it’s muddy beside a crowd. “At Oxfam we made a great point of putting our senior staff on driving courses to make sure they were safe in those conditions.”
You plan not for a particular contingency, because you can never make a plan for every scenario. In any case, you know what can go wrong, such as a cloudburst or a rush on the medics because of an outbreak of food poisoning. Rather, you plan generically, for ‘the worst’; for evacuating people, for example, for whatever reason. Scenes of Glastonbury-goers smiling through mud are a summer staple. Emma recalls that at the 2014 festival, an afternoon thunderstorm meant many of the stages had to go dark temporarily. Besides resolving that, managers have to be informed by staff, to keep customers informed, besides safe; because most if not all the festival-goers will want to stay where they are. Because organisers had a plan, they were not caught by surprise. “I didn’t do a single dry event this year!” Emma recalls, which prompts the point that events have to look to the welfare of staff, besides customers. If you want stewards to keep turning up for shifts, that is. If their uniforms get soaking wet, can they get dry again? Can those on duty at 4am get a hot drink? Emma returns to her stress on command and control, and good supervision, as she did a masters degree in emergency management – at Coventry University, incidentally, a centre for that specialism; and Bucks New runs a module on this side of crowd safety management, ‘how to build structures in the organisation so you have good management in steady-state operations and in heightened times of emergency’.
What developments in the field can she foresee? Ticketing for one thing: paper tickets could become history. Likewise, events might go cashless, which would have security implications. Pre-paid cards or wristbands loaded with money beforehand would mean less need for cash in transit collections (but a risk of thefts of wristbands?). She speaks also of social media, both as a way of giving the right timely messages to event-goers, and to gauge customer opinion, during and after. As she says, you can be sure the audience is talking to each other via social media about your event, and if something crops up – such as a ‘flash mob’ – security control had better spot it, to deploy staff there. Or, a little-known artist might suddenly become all the rage on social media, and an unexpectedly large crowd heads for the performance. Social media can give Security the heads-up. As Emma says, a flash-mob is not looking to get hurt, or harm others, but it may put followers in danger, if for instance on the way to the rendez-vous there’s a cross-flow of other crowds. Emma suggests that you ought to know if your event is the sort that attracts flash-mobs; if so, you (or rather someone specialising in social media) should be looking for tell-tale hashtags. And more importantly, returning to command and control systems, once social media monitoring throws up an approaching flash mob, you have a pre-prepared plan in place to do something about it and are ready to execute it.
She reports some excellent work by event managers to track flows of event-goers, so as to predict lulls (when you can give staff a meal break) and peaks (when you need more staff at the entrances to cut queues). Information is available; it’s for event security managers to use it, to provide a better service, and even to make possible that outstanding moment of the weekend, that the audience will take away and cherish (and chatter about on social media) and make them want to return next year. Promoters, she says, are deeply interested in what their customers are saying about the events – understandably, as it’s free feedback. Likewise: “It’s the job of the event manager to be constantly horizon-scanning. And we have to teach the skills to horizon-scan.” There’s no such thing as an unforeseeable situation, ‘just an inappropriate response’.
She speaks of events as ‘really complex systems’. Besides the huge numbers of people coming from all corners to some field in Somerset or Derbyshire, miles from bus routes or trains, you need to keep those thousands fed, safe, and looked after if they drink too much or get sunstroke or take illegal drugs, which is likely among so many young people. An event security manager is on a year by year contract at each event; and as so often in the workplace, you are only as good as your last job. Hence, as Emma admits, few want to highlight their mistakes. Readers may recall from the August issue that at IFSEC Stephen Green spoke of how the security industry is ‘terrible’ at learning from its mistakes. While some of the bigger event security players are honest about their work, many do not acknowledge where things go wrong, Emma suggests. You could say it’s only natural – and business sense – to hide shortcomings. But Emma’s point is that other sectors (nuclear power for example? Civil aviation?) require the sharing of information. Not sharing cases of near-misses puts the event industry overall at a disadvantage, because how then can others avoid those same problems?
By near-misses we mean not the well-known accidents such as that JLS event, but incidents where usually more than one thing happens – even by well-meaning but ignorant staff – that could have led to a crush. Nor can social media necessarily fill that gap, because customers might not recognise or see a near-miss. Analysis of where things go wrong, Emma argues, makes for a more robust industry, and more reliable security.
To sum up, then, event security is a ‘never a dull moment’ field – literally and metaphorically. It has to relate to retail, traffic and other operations, and tap into the psychology of crowds. It even overlaps with close protection of the musicians or others starring at the event. Perhaps several of those fields come all at once; there’s a flash mob developing on Twitter to head for some hip musical act, while an outbreak of thefts has been reported from a camp site. And by the time you’ve got used to an event, it’s over; until the next year.
Attention: Lionel Richie
As a sign of how varied live events have become, while the typical Oxfam steward is of student age, 18 to 24, Emma Parkinson reports that some have returned to stewarding after perhaps 20 years, having in the mean time brought up children. Some stewards are, shall we say, of a generation that jumped at the chance to steward Cliff Richard’s concert tour in 2013. Events also, perhaps because they are a break from the weekday routine, inspire the frankly wacky. Take the giant inflatable head of Lionel Richie at Bestival on the Isle of Wight; like a bouncy castle, with cushions inside. It was the job of Security to deflate the balloon, if the wind got up. Emma recalls the bizarre control room comment: “Have we evacuated Lionel Richie’s head yet?!”
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Emma Parkinson on Linkedin – uk.linkedin.com/pub/emma-parkinson/4/580/87b.
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