Summer in the City (event)

Summer in the City (sometimes styled as SitC) is an annual three-day event held in London, dedicated to YouTube content creators and users.^[2][3][4] The event began in 2009 as a small gathering in London's parks, and has since grown into a convention-scale event that now takes place annually at ExCeL London. 2014's event in Alexandra Palace attracted over 8,000 attendees.^[5]

In 2016, SitC was acquired by MCM Expo Group as part of their "MCM Central" brand. The first event hosted under the MCM ownership took place August 12-14.^[6]

History

2009 - 2011 (London Parks)

The first Summer in the City was held in London, as a traditional YouTube gathering. It was organised by vlogger Tom Burns and YouTube musician Dave Bullas, with support of their friends Liam Dryden And Jazza John. The three-day event was held in the last weekend of August and took place across several of London's Royal Parks.^[7] The largest attendance at any point was reportedly 200 people, a mix of YouTube creators and viewers.

In its first three years, the event followed the pattern of meeting in parks by day, and moving to a London venue such as The Luminaire for live music performances in the evening. ^[8]

2012 (The Brewery)

Following the rapid growth of the event, the decision was made to hold the fourth Summer in the City at a dedicated venue for its duration; and SitC 2012 took place at the Brewery in London from August 17-19.^[9] This was the first year the event would introduce official programming, including workshops and Q&As from creators, as well as an official livestream on the event's YouTube channel. ^[10]

The number of prospective attendees of SitC 2012 exceeded the 1,000-person capacity of the venue, inspiring the need to move away from being a free event and introduce ticketing in following years.^[11]

2013 - 2014 (Alexandra Palace)

SitC's first official ticketed event and the fifth event overall was held in London's Alexandra Palace, with an increased capacity of 7,000 attendees. Backlash over the announcement that the event would now charge admission before confirming the venue, dates or line-up of featured creators resulted in the cut of early ticket prices to £10 plus VAT.^[12] The event was sold out by early July 2013,^[13] and was held over two days on August 17-18.

Accompanying 2013's event was a spin-off tour called the Summer Warm-Up, which involved creators from the SitC 2013 line-up touring through some of the UK's major cities, to perform one-off gigs in the build-up to the main event in London.^[14]

2013's event was also the introduction of formal meet & greets, where fans would wait in line to meet popular YouTubers from the lineup. The high demand of creators along with the "first come, first served" model of the meet & greets resulted in the decision to add additional ticketing to the meet & greets in 2014.^[15]

Tickets for SitC 2014 were available as early as October 2013,^[16] and had sold out by January.^[17] The sixth event also saw the return of Friday programming, as the event introduced Friday as Creator Day; a more limited event of panels and networking specifically targeted towards creators rather than fans.^[18]

Continuing issues with the demand for SitC's meet & greets in 2014 inspired the development of an online ballot system, that has since been implemented in following events.^[19]

2015 - 2016 (ExCeL London)

Summer in the City moved to ExCeL for its seventh year which increased its overall capacity to 10,000 attendees.^[20] Upon the preliminary announcement of the venue and ticket sales in January 2015, a large number of influential creators from talent network Gleam including Zoella, Alfie Deyes and Joe Sugg simultaneously announced they would not be attending 2015's event, favouring plans for their own event titled Amity Fest.^[21] The event maintained a robust lineup of creators, hosting the presentation of several YouTube Play Button awards to creators who had recently hit milestones of 100,000 or 1 million subscribers on their channels.^[22]

In February 2016, it was announced that Summer in the City had joined MCM Expo Group, who would be providing resources and support for the original organisational team in the event's eighth year.^[23] SitC 2016 was also the debut of the Summer in the City Awards, an event dedicated to presenting community-nominated awards such as "Best Vlogger" and "YouTuber Book Of The Year" to winning creators on the mainstage.^[24]

References