Stuttgart, June 9, 2020. Summer, sunshine, festival season! And this year, it’s going to be very different, since large-scale events with many guests and close contact won’t be possible for quite some time. The event agency follow red GmbH, with 30 years of live event experience based in Stuttgart, is making the best of a difficult situation and, together with SKS Michael Russ GmbH, is bringing drive-in concerts to the southwestern region.
Under the slogan “Live Summer 2020,” the event specialists at follow red and their partners will transform the unused parking lots at Stuttgart Airport into a festival grounds for four weeks starting June 13, 2020. There will be space for 650 cars per show, as large-scale events involving close contact between attendees will not be possible for the foreseeable future. The program features rock and pop, hip-hop and electronic music, comedy, and poetry. Michael Patrick Kelly will kick things off, and Felix Jaehn, Robin Schulz, voXXclub, Eure Mütter, and many more have also confirmed their participation. The team is working on securing additional top acts, and the lineup is being updated regularly. This gives concert fans throughout southern Germany another opportunity to experience live music on a large scale. At the same time, it supports all those who are facing professional and financial ruin due to the ban on events: artists and technicians, as well as service providers and many others who work in the concert industry.
“The past few months have hit the events industry hard,” says Sebastian Wiese, managing partner at follow red and head of the events division, explaining the situation. “Not only artists, concert promoters, and venues, but also agencies like follow red, which develop creative ideas for events and then bring them to life.” So, taking a pragmatic and flexible approach, they set out to find alternatives and collectively came up with the idea of organizing drive-in concerts for the southern region. “This allows us to kill two birds with one stone: On the one hand, we’re putting our event managers’ expertise to good use, and on the other, we’re making a cultural contribution to the region and offering both artists and the public a little variety,” says Wiese.
As a co-organizer of the project, follow red is primarily responsible for securing sponsors in the run-up to the event, as well as organizing catering for up to 650 vehicles on site. SKS Michael Russ GmbH handles the areas of artists, stage, production, and safety/hygiene. Wiese assures us: “The most important thing at Live Sommer 2020 is, of course, the safety and health of visitors, artists, and staff. That’s why we will meticulously ensure compliance with all safety and hygiene regulations, which we have developed in close cooperation with the relevant authorities.”
Sebastian Wiese would like to extend his heartfelt thanks to Flughafen Stuttgart GmbH and the City of Leinfelden-Echterdingen for their support of Live Sommer 2020, as well as to Hitradio Antenne 1, which served as the event’s media partner and took on the role of host.
Advance ticket sales for LiveSommer 2020 have already begun, and the first concerts—such as the one featuring Michael Patrick Kelly—are already sold out. Tickets are available at www.livesommer2020.de, www.stuttgart-live.de, and www.musiccircus.de.
