Outdoor events are trending now as a preliminary step to reopening the economy and allowing people to gather together safely to shop, listen to music, watch films, and celebrate. More and more often, I’m receiving calls to set up outdoor options for events that used to be held indoors.
This got me thinkingOutdoor movie theaters were all the rage in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Families loaded the car with kids in PJs, who wound up falling asleep halfway through the film while the parents enjoyed watching it from the comfort of their vehicle. Drive-ins all but disappeared as people gathered at indoor theaters and land became more valuable to developers as mall space. Today, parks, parking lots, and school stadiums are serving as pop-up outdoor-event spaces, where we can safely gather as we emerge from the COVID-19 quarantine. We’ll come to rely on outdoor movies, concerts, lectures, and markets this summer as a way to feel safe and appropriately distanced as we congregate with our friends and family members.
We at InProduction are being asked to create the drawings, provide the barriers that help to form virtual outdoor rooms, and assemble bleachers on the sidelines, where families can sit together at a safe distance from others. And the staging? That’s a piece of cake for us, as are ticket booths and lane alleys for portable toilets.
I find it personally gratifying to work on this type of event growth. It is community and family based, and if we have learned anything over the last few months, it’s that that is what matters to us all. Let me know if I can provide you with some ideas and share what we’ve learned that will be of benefit to your community.