Next year’s St Kilda Festival has been cancelled amid COVID-19 concerns.
At a meeting last night, Port Phillip Council decided to suspend its 2021 event “as safety and restriction uncertainties continue to surround the COVID-19 pandemic”.
“The St Kilda Festival will be missed next year – but not forgotten,” Mayor Bernadene Voss said.
“Our intention is to come back bigger and better than ever in 2022. In the meantime, this gives us an opportunity to reimagine the Festival for 2021 and look at funding a range of options which can be enjoyed when restrictions have eased.”
Expect to attract more than 400,000 attendees, St Kilda Festival 2021 was scheduled to take place on February 14.
Port Phillip Council announced that $1.7 million that was intended for next year’s event will be “quarantined and spent on economic and cultural recovery initiatives when restrictions ease”.
“The criteria as to how the funding will be allocated is yet to be confirmed,” Voss said.
“We are exploring lots of ideas, such as a series of mini-events across Port Phillip.”
Since kicking off in 1980, St Kilda Festival has hosted the likes of Daryl Braithwaite, Hunters & Collectors, Kate Miller-Heidke, Killing Heidi, Missy Higgins, Paul Kelly and stacks more.
Melbourne is not the only city suffering from COVID-19 related cancellations today, with the Gold Coast's CRAFTED Beer & Cider Festival announcing it won't be going ahead with its 12 September event.
“To all the beer and cider lovers - after careful deliberation, we, the Crafted Beer & Cider Festival team have made the extremely difficult decision to postpone the 2020 event due to take place on Saturday 12 September," said organisers in a statement today.
"When we went on sale six weeks ago, we did so under the premise that we would be able to run the event much like our previous years but with extra COVID Safe measures in place to ensure the safety of all attendees such as social distancing and extra sanitisation and contact tracing measures.
"The health and safety of you, our beer drinking pals and ticket holders is always our first priority and in a response to the recent community transmission in NSW & VIC, a new regulation has since come from QLD authorities requiring all event attendees to be seated within a licenced venue - whether indoors or outdoors."
See the full statement and find more information here.
