Keep Everyone Safe: Fencing Guidelines for Festival Season

With spring underway, summer is just around the corner. And with summer comes Festival season: music festivals of all types and sizes, arts festivals, crafts festivals, the classic Fringe… the list of opportunities seem limitless.

But what every Festival has in common — and what every Festival organizer needs to pay attention to – is fencing. Festival fencing allows organizers to choose where people can and cannot go on the Festival grounds. In other words, fencing is critical to keep unauthorized people away from the Festival itself as well as allowing performers some quiet space to use prior to and after their shows. 

Properly deployed fencing proves an extremely easy solution to keep all Festival guests safe, providing an ideal option for shaping a large area with temporary partitions for a short period of time (the all-familiar Festival weekend).

In preparation for the coming Festival flurry, we have a few suggested guidelines that will make your fencing decisions a bit easier.

One Size Does Not Fit All Occasions

As with so many pieces of the Festival puzzle, the type of equipment you need depends on the venue. Are there hills, trees, or waterways on site that need to be taken into consideration? Is the venue tucked in a residential area or is it rural, open space? What other pieces of the puzzle do you need to think about protecting or guiding the guest flow towards (or away from): A beer tent? Merchandise tent? Food trucks?

Admission systems, barricades, and mobile fences all work in different ways to mark out space, create pathways and traffic areas, and clearly mark out for guests where one area ends and another begins. Fence gate assemblies are great for marking off parking and camping areas, while privacy fence screen are perfect for screening off backstage or sanitary stations. 

Think Crowd Management

Festivals draw crowds and crowds create potential challenges for organizers. Whether it’s an open-air venue or indoor space, guests can only have a first-class Festival experience if the atmosphere is right and they feel safe. This means having above-average crowd management, which means controlling crowd flow and preventing large crowds from forming in inappropriate spaces as well as marking emergency exits and first-aid posts. 

Additionally, well-designed fencing helps the event staff keep a better overview of specific sections of the Festival grounds.

Painted in high-visibility safety orange (or black if you want less intrusive control features), portable fence assemblies use safe, effective internal hook connectors, which means that each section is free of clamps, bolts, or drilled holes so it is quick to install (and tear-down) and leaves a minimum post-Festival footprint.

The Mad Men Principle

The much-celebrated television series Mad Men focuses on the allure and behind-the-stage magic that goes into effective advertising. As the lead character, Don Draper, explains: “Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. You know what happiness is? Happiness is smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing, it’s okay. You are okay.”

Festivals take money to run and diversifying potential revenue streams is another way to bring in additional, much-needed money. Custom outdoor banners and fence sign advertising provide Festival organizers with a wide range of advertising opportunities to:

• Promote the Festival or a related event
• Recognizing a sponsor
• Allow local businesses to promote a new product or service
• Notify the public of Festival hours, rules, and happiness guidelines
• Provide an enthusiastic greeting to all your guests and performers
• Highlight your company logo with a bright, high-resolution image.

A well-considered fencing plan allows for passive revenue to flow into the Festival every day of the event without staffing or maintenance costs. As Draper might say, a win-win for everyone.

Conclusion

Taking some time to plan your Festival fencing will go a long way to ensuring that your guests have a memorable, safe experience and help increase revenue so that next year’s event will be better still. If you have any questions about Festival or other event fencing, please contact one of the fencing experts at Orange Fence Rentals to take the first steps toward building amazing memories.