Flickers of Joy at the UK's First Socially Distanced Concert Venue

It is the first Saturday in September and I am traipsing across a field in Newcastle, following yellow signs directing me towards the “ARENA”.

This is only the second time I have left London since March, when lockdown began, and the first time I have been to anything resembling a live music event.

For many reasons, it is weird to be here, in this park, in this city that I have only visited once before. It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that we were only let out of our homes to walk ourselves around parks for an hour per day, like dogs in ailing health, let alone allowed to travel around the country.

Another weird thing is the “ARENA” itself. Instead of your usual outdoor gig set-up (which generally goes something like: big stage, flanked by overcrowded bars and stalls selling “gourmet waffles”, with an open space in the middle where punters stand to watch the music), the place is full of what look like metal pig pens, only they’re for humans to watch concerts from.

This is the Virgin Money Unity Arena, housed in Newcastle’s Gosforth Park. It’s the site of the biggest socially distanced concerts currently happening in the UK, and it is, necessarily, very odd. Over the past few weeks the site has hosted acts like Supergrass and Jimmy Carr, while later in September, Chase and Status, Boyzone’s own Ronan Keating and a number of various others performers will join the lineup.

A while ago, I got an email asking if I’d like to go there to see a concert, and I couldn’t figure out whether the invitation to the arena was one to witness the future of live music or the death of it. So I gathered up my face mask (to be worn in all communal areas throughout the venue, baby) and my esteemed colleague Hannah Ewens, and we went to decide for ourselves.

To allow for proper social distancing, the Virgin Money Unity Arena has 500 viewing platforms, for a maximum capacity of 2,500 people, which is about half of what Brixton Academy can hold. We booked in to see Maxïmo Park on the 5th of September, and they performed to a sold-out crowd.

When you arrive, you have your tickets scanned as you would at any outdoor concert, but before you actually enter the venue you’re handed a slip with a number on it. That number corresponds to what the arena niftily calls your “viewing platform”, i.e. the area that you and the other ticket holders in your “bubble” will watch the concert from, distanced from all of the other concert-goers. You can leave the platform to go to the bar if you wish, but only if you’re wearing a mask (you’re allowed to remove your mask on your platform).

Obviously, this isn’t an ideal way to facilitate the transcendent experiences that live music can produce; I don’t think anyone will be telling their grandchildren about the time they saw God during a concert where they were stood inside a mini-enclosure that looks so much like it was built for farm animals that it’s hard to think of any other way to describe it.

That said, while earlier in the evening I worried that there might be a bit of a sadness hanging over the whole thing, with the field steadily filled out to capacity – and in a sold-out crowd, listening to loud music under the lights – it was sort of like old times, if you squinted.

It’s certainly not the same as it was – but for music fans, it’s a well-thought out way to revisit a much-loved hobby at a time when there’s no other choice but to be socially distant. I can attest to the fact that, if you were used to going to gigs, hearing live drums for the first time in months definitely gives you much more of a thrill than you’d probably expect.

Looking back, the deeper we traversed into the 2010s, the more the Great British Festival became Coachellafied – AKA sponsored by Natwest, catered by Wahaca and as captured by influencers. Soon enough, everyone wanted more from their festi culinary experience than burger and chips three nights in a row.

These socially distanced outdoor gigs, though, are a return to the festivals of yesteryear, before the advent of vegan truffle mac-and-cheese and espresso martinis in plastic glasses. We’re talking pints of Carling and hot dogs. And that’s fine with me – maybe we needed to stop thinking about festivals as food industry trade events. Or maybe I’m just grateful to have live music back and want us all to be grateful.

It’ll be a brand new skill for musicians to master for 2021: how to do banter with a small and ridiculously spaced-out crowd. The guys up there were trying, I think, but do you remember your first IRL conversations post-lockdown? It was like trying to speak Spanglish on holiday while having a caffeine-induced panic attack.

Overall, this gig was how I remembered shows from the Before Time, only everyone onstage looked like an alien doing their first show in human bodies. Also, I was an alien.

Imagine a band playing just to you and your mates, but you’re half a field away from the band. It was something like that. The vibe was quite similar to being in a karaoke booth – consider it your own job to bring the hype. You’re in your little pen, like a group of sheep, and you’re aware that other people are having an alright time, but can you hear them and feel them? Not really, no.

Really, your enjoyment hinges on: a) how much you like the artist you’ve paid £70 to watch perform, and b) how good your mates are. No pressure, then, if you’re as fun as we are after six cans of Prosecco each.

In general, the experience put me in mind of something like British Summer Time, the series of day festivals which take place in London’s Hyde Park every year, sponsored by Barclaycard. They’re fun, bombastic days out, where you usually see very popular artists play their music to a big audience.

The acts playing the Virgin Money Unity Arena have similar wide-scale appeal, because: a) this is one of the only chances people have to see live music at the minute, so the organisers obviously wanted to have a diverse and accessible spread of acts, and b) ultimately, the exercise is a business venture by a large corporation.

Much of the live music industry before the pandemic had corporate backing, so Virgin Money’s involvement isn’t anything new, and it doesn’t particularly take away from the fact that the concerts at the Unity Arena give people the chance to have a good time scratching an itch they haven’t been able to in some time. But what is a concern is that the first organisation able to mobilise a live music venue during COVID-time was a bank. Due to government inaction, many small venues – which provide the UK’s much-needed base for newer, weirder, more niche and emerging music acts – are either in massive financial precarity, or have already had to shut down.

There’s no doubt that the arena offers a novel and genuinely enjoyable way to see live music – but only live music of a certain scale. While it works for now, as distancing measures rightfully remain in place, you have to hope that it’s the sort of thing we’ll be able to remember in the right way: as a funny oddity of this bizarre moment in time, rather than a foreshadowing of the live music industry of the future.