The COVID crisis decimating live events has prompted the industry to do something it rarely has before: lobby its elected representatives.
The notoriously fragmented event industry—which relies on a spectrum of professionals from planners to caterers to entertainers to techs--is coalescing under the umbrella organization the Live Events Coalition. The Washington-based group has two goals: to leverage the event community to support event professionals, and to highlight the catastrophic impact of COVID on the industry and ensure it is included in federal relief packages.
What can you do now?
CONTACT CONGRESS Contact your U.S. Congressional representatives, both in the Senate and House, to support the RESTART Act. This loan program will provide relief for affected workers through the end of the year. Note: The Economic Impact Payments program, which provided stimulus checks to many taxpayers, will expire at the end of July.
The RESTART Act loan program provides access to partially forgivable seven-year loans covering six months of expenses. The legislation is tailored to small and mid-sized shuttered businesses that have experienced more than 25 percent in losses.
See details of the RESTART Act.
The New York/New Jersey chapter of the Live Events Coalition offers this suggested letter to send to your representatives
USE SOCIAL MEDIA In order to draw attention to the size and importance of the events industry, the Live Events Coalition is backing the #WishIWasThere social media campaign.
The coalition is asking event pros to post black-and-white images (which suggest a sense of nostalgia) of themselves and their teams at work. “This will help educate policymakers and the general public on the seismic impact of COVID-19 on the live events industry’s workforce of 12,000,000 people to encourage legislative support,” the group says.
The coalition asks that event pros share a caption explaining the event being shown and telling how the loss of work is affecting you, your team, and your business. Pros should also use the #WishIWasThere hashtag in the text of the message and #LiveEventsCo on each post to help the coalition track analytics. The coalition also recommends tagging representatives and senators to let them know you are a constituent.
To join the Live Events Coalition, click here.
