We study how event organizers with an eye towards shaping the evolution of organizational fields enact a situation of disruption in Germany’s popular music industry. We find that the organizers of three new industry event series experimented with alternative event formats, modeled alternative value chains, and embedded events regionally to stage alternative possibilities for the field’s future. Thus, they provided temporary, yet recurring arenas for testing out new field boundaries and practices. We argue that organizing and situating events in a field’s wider event landscape is a form of cyclical proto-institutional work that gives direct impulses for field reconfiguration.