Events of the Future

Events in their simplest form can be viewed as gatherings of people. Events have always existed as they allow people to gather for one or more of the following reasons: To solve problems individuals are not able to solve on their own; To celebrate; To mourn; To mark transitions; To make decisions because we need one another; To show strength; To honour and acknowledge; To build companies and schools and neighbourhoods; To welcome; To say goodbye (Parker, 2018). Thus, a gathering can be described as the ‘conscious bringing together of people for a reason’ and it ‘shapes the way we think, feel and make sense of our world’ (Parker, 2018: i). This highlights the importance of events in society and confirms that the motivation to attend an event in the future is likely to remain the same because we are likely to continue to have the basic human need for inclusivity and contact (Hari et al., 2015). As human beings, the importance of social interaction is evident in our everyday life, we are shaped by other people and we crave social contact to the extent that ‘isolation is used as punishment and even as torture’ (Hari et al., 2015). Such face-to-face engagement may become more prevalent in the future because we spend ‘more and more time in front of a screen each year’ and so are spending less time engaging in face-to-face contact. As a result, ‘face-to-face time has become a more treasured commodity in our modern world’ (Social Tables, 2019).