With courage and confidence

"The forced break due to the pandemic has hit us all very hard," says also Selina Nickel, PR Manager of Apassionata World GmbH and mentions in this context especially the freelance artists, i.e. riders and dancers, who work for CAVALLUNA. So now it finally goes on again for the ensemble in front of an audience!

Nickel reports: "For our team on tour, 2G or 2G+ applied from the beginning, so that we had to cope with as few restrictions as possible, at least backstage. That's unavoidable for a team of about 100 people, some of whom have to work closely together every day." Of course, this rule still applies, even for the currently running show CAVALLUNA - Legend of the Desert, which had to be interrupted by the pandemic and can be played since April . "We are now looking forward to an almost normal tour year with the show CAVALLUNA - Secret of Eternity, which will start touring in October 2022 in Riesa. Our premise is to play everywhere we can, even with reduced audience capacity and extra hygiene rules. We as well as our audience are just incredibly happy that the passion of the CAVALLUNA shows can finally be presented again". Selina nickel looks positively on the present situation.

Volker Wulff, CEO of En Garde Marketing GmbH, cites the biggest challenge of the two pandemic years as keeping the courage and confidence and transferring it to his team. "There was a lot of hope and setbacks that had to be dealt with again and again. That was hard. If I had known from the beginning that the pandemic, with its direct impact on the event industry, would last two years, I don't know if I wouldn't have given up right away. But now I'm glad we held out," says the organizer, who held one of the first major events after the pandemic with Partner Pferd and is now bringing another traditional event back to the start after a forced break with the Hamburg Derby. Wulff reports: "Of course, we have been a bit strapped for cash. But the government aid has worked for us and has helped us to continue with the same number of staff, although there has been some fluctuation in personnel."

Strong cohesion

However, he says the crisis situation also welded the staff together even more and strengthened them for further tasks. "The self-confidence, especially of the young employees, has clearly developed positively as a result of the crisis. They have learned not to bury their heads in the sand and to always look ahead!" Looking to the future, the experienced organizer hopes to retain the confidence gained and transfer it to other challenges. In addition, he points out the special importance of live events, which the industry should face together: "We should urgently try to work on our lobby as event organizers. We have a big social task and a big social responsibility. Being able to attend events is for many people the reward for their constant work. When you don't have the opportunity to reward yourself, dissatisfaction arises and people look for ways out, which are often not positive."

In addition, Wulff said, people should be clear that they can only get out of the crisis together. "We must not start now to cannibalize and each other, because possible short-term thinking drives us to think of the quick buck. The event industry must stick together. Service providers must act with reason and a sense of proportion when it comes to pricing. It is not acceptable to try to recoup the financial losses of the last two years as quickly as possible. Certainly, event attendance will become more expensive in the future, because everything is becoming more expensive. But we must not get into a situation where event attendance becomes unaffordable - that would automatically lead to an event die-off. And that doesn't serve anyone."