'Because of Covid we all had to upskill': Online events open up surprising opportunities

Finding a way to pivot your business has been vital this year but it is even more so when you work in live events

Natasha Duffy has found that having multiple facets to the business is the best way to keep things going, but central to everything she is doing are the Sofft Nights festivals. Picture: Ray Keogh

The live event industry has been one of the hardest hit of the pandemic but when Natasha Duffy was faced with no work last year, instead of turning away from the business she knew so well, she leaned into it and launched something new.

“I've always believed that necessity is the mother of invention and in some ways it is during crisis that I have become the most creative. You have a chance to carve out a niche for yourself in ways that maybe you weren’t doing before. At the start of March 2020, myself and my two business partners all found ourselves without any work. After a couple of weeks of feeling sorry for ourselves we decided to band together and see what we could do. We invested our savings in new equipment so that we could pivot to online presentations of work and then when it looked like there would be some opening up for larger crowds we decided to curate our own flagship event that could roll out during Covid times. It was a huge success and since then we have organised a number of shows for this summer in July, August and September all under the banner of Sofft Nights and thankfully we got extra support from the Live Performance Support Scheme scheme to make it happen. We have also started consulting with different companies and agencies to help them create Covid friendly outdoor events.”