This morning at the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, we talked with music festival organisers about the impact of Brexit and coronavirus on the live music industry.
Music festivals make enormous economic and cultural contributions to Scotland and the wider UK. The immediate and long-term challenges they are now facing as a result of COVID-19, compounded by Brexit, are significant.
I also talked with Anna Wade, Communications & Strategy Director at the Boomtown festival, about harm reduction and keeping people safe at music festivals when they do resume. She told me that the United Kingdom’s “hardline, zero-tolerance” approach to drug regulation is not working and that a public health approach would be more effective at reducing harm.
“Educating and supporting drug users to make sensible, well-informed decisions is so vitally important. The real key is factual, non-judgmental education.”
Anna Wade, Communications & Strategy Director at the Boomtown festival speaking to John Nicolson MP on approaches to drug regulation at festivals on DCMS Committee.