How to use scenario planning to plan your next event - a practical guide
NOTE: Originally written in 2020, this article was updated in January 2022
No one has a crystal ball to predict how COVID government regulations or localised hotspots will affect your event in 2022 or beyond.
Will things be back to normal-ish by the time your event is held?
Will your region have an outbreak during your event impacting people’s desire to go out?
Seriously, what else could go wrong?
A bushfire lapping the edge of town and filling the sky with smoke during the festival as happened to Tenterfield’s Peter Allen Festival during the Black Summer bushfires?
Severely low town water supply due to record drought affecting the community’s appetite for visitors as happened to the Adina Polocrosse World Cup 2019 in Warwick?
Being rained out as happened to one of Queensland’s first COVID-safe events, the Gold Coast Expo (caravan and camping expo)?
Scenario planning can help you clearly think through risks to your event, so you can plan for them!
How Tamworth Country Music Festival used scenarios to help planning for 2021
Tamworth Country Music Festival’s organisers whittled down potential COVID-related scenarios as they worked towards their January 2021 festival to four: from 'everything is normal' through to 'nothing is normal and state borders are closed'.
The organisers (Tamworth Regional Council staff) aligned the scenarios with the critical need to preserve the brand’s reputation - that no matter what the festival looked like in 2021 as it adapted to COVID-19, the experience would still be as exceptional as people would expect from the brand.
Based on the state’s public health orders in place (prohibition of music festivals and mass gatherings and travel restrictions), coupled with venue capacity challenges, in early September 2020 Tamworth’s Councillors voted to suspend all Council-run events for the 2021 festival. The 2021 Toyota Golden Guitar Awards continued as a livestreamed event.
How to plan for a variety of COVID-affected scenarios
Our recommended steps for scenario planning for your 2022 event are as follows.
1. Gather your organisers and main stakeholders for a brainstorming session – diverse views add value!
2. Identify the driving forces that will affect your event
Discuss what are going to be the big changes that will impact your event in the coming months and years to do with COVID, the economy, society, politics (who is in power and the values that guide their approach to policies), technology, the environment (including natural disasters fuelled by climate change) and legal factors (including regulations around COVID).
Take notes during the discussion to develop a list of the main driving forces that will affect your event.
3. Identify the critical uncertainties that will affect your event
Once you have identified the driving forces in Step 2 and made it a list, choose the two that will have the most impact on your event.
4. Develop four plausible scenarios
The goal is now to form a matrix with your two critical uncertainties as axes (see our example below). Depending on what direction each of the uncertainties will take, you are now able to draw four possible scenarios for the future.
5. Discuss the implications
During this final step, discuss the implications and impacts of each scenario and how you would adjust your event in response.
A few things we suggest you consider at this step:
Know your event’s ‘why’ – What do you hope to achieve by holding your event? For example, are you using the event to showcase your destination/attract visitors to your destination, support artists, support local businesses, bring the community together, showcase local produce, raise money for a cause, or some other reason? Can this purpose still be achieved under the conditions of the scenario? Is the risk worth it?
Keep your ideal attendee and their needs in mind as you reimagine your event for each scenario
Have your Treasurer figure out the financial break-even point. For example, how many tickets do you need to sell in order to cover your costs? (The break-even point might be different in each scenario as costs or revenue streams change)
Consider what can be changed about your event that is low cost and doesn’t involve gathering people together
In each scenario consider what you would do to adjust your event if your region was put under heavy restrictions with little warning (For example, plan for a hybrid event (of physical and online elements) and remove the physical elements if put under restrictions. Consider the financial implications of this occurring as you reimagine your event.
What could it look like for regional events? We had a go…
Back in late 2020 when we thought about the variety of events held across regional Australia (festivals, sports and business events), we thought that the critical uncertainties that might affect events were government regulations around COVID and the unknown depth of the potential economic recession caused by COVID restrictions such as lockdowns and border closures.
COVID
This axis would range at one end of the scale where life is pretty much as it used to be where COVID-safe gatherings could take place …to mass gatherings banned at the other end of the scale
Economic recession
This axis would range from the economy is ticking along without a huge impact on spending with many in society still employed with regular incomes …to an economic disaster where many have lost incomes to COVID, the economy is tanking and spending is way down.
Like this:
The four scenarios created are then:
Scenario 1: Gatherings go back to almost-normal as COVID is contained + the economy is ticking along ok
Scenario 2: Gatherings go back to almost-normal as COVID is contained + the economy is tanking bad
Scenario 3: Gatherings are banned as COVID infections spike + the economy is ticking along ok
Scenario 4: Gatherings are banned as COVID infections spike + the economy is tanking badly
Kind of
GOOD
NOT *TOO* BAD
NOT *TOO* BAD
BAD
Here’s how our notes actually looked:
Two examples of imagining an event under each scenario
We undertook the process of imagining how to respond to each scenario for two real events:
A SMALL TOWN MARKET-BASED FESTIVAL - a one-day outdoor festival that attracts 15,000 comprised of a parade, market, food trucks, and quirky games
AN ARTS FESTIVAL - a ten-day arts festival in a tourism destination comprised of a variety of high-quality arts performances (live music, dance, theatre, etc), exhibitions and meal events in a variety of indoor and outdoor venues
SMALL TOWN MARKET-BASED FESTIVAL
We wrote down how the event could be run in each scenario - we made only brief notes, but you’d want to go into all the details.
ARTS FESTIVAL
Learn more
Linda Tillman spoke more on the arts festival’s innovative venue and hybrid solutions in our on-demand Master Class on reinvigorating events in response to COVID-19