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Safely Completed! Events During the Pandemic

Steinbeis experts from Aalen University advise Kapfenburg Castle

The event industry is one of the sectors hit particularly hard by the Corona pandemic. Organizers are working hard to make events possible despite all the constraints. The Steinbeis Transfer Center Applied Management, which is committed to sustainable events and their implementation, is also providing support. Steinbeis entrepreneur Professor Dr. Ulrich Holzbaur advised Kapfenburg Castle, the cultural center and home of the International Music School Academy, in the Continuo model project.

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The aim of “Continuo” was to resume regular operations at Kapfenburg in the summer of 2021, with specific adaptation of the corona hygiene conditions, in order to enable a long-term return to important aspects of life such as art, culture, education as well as tourism, so events could start happening again in the long term.

Ulrich Holzbaur, entrepreneur at Steinbeis and professor at Aalen University, accepted the challenge alongside the Steinbeis Transfer Center for Applied Management. Together with Professor Dr. Dieter Ahrens from the health management course at Aalen University and in cooperation with the event management company silverdust, he had already worked on hygiene concepts, resulting in a scientific thesis on the S.A.F.E concept (Fleischer 2021) and a publication (Holzbaur & Fleischer 2022).

Events based on S.A.F.E and defined vaccination requirements

Building on this basis, Dieter Ahrens and Ulrich Holzbaur, together with three students from Aalen University, took on the conception and accompanying research for events under corona conditions. The decreasing incidence in the summer and a reduction in the model project made some adjustments necessary, so that the team finally organized and scientifically accompanied individual events (music rehearsal, concerts, education) for a period of two weeks in June. The concept was based on “S.A.F.E” and the 3G rule. The hygiene concepts for Kapfenburg Castle were designed, analyzed and adapted (Ahrens et al. 2021).

“A central finding from the model project and the general observation of the political and practical handling of the pandemic is that a lack of risk communication contributes significantly to the fact that prevention measures are not implemented in the population as desired,” concludes Ulrich Holzbaur.

Incidentally, both professors donated their fees for the project to the “Deutschland hilft” campaign for the victims of the flood disaster on the River Ahr. From start to finish, the flexibility in project management was a key factor in the success of this project. Thanks to the importance of the Kapfenburg Castle Music Academy, the project also attracted a great deal of interest from television and the local press.