The following excerpt is taken from a Happy Mag article published on the 6th August 2021.
By Mike Hitch.
Despite extensive risk planning, Sydney Fringe Festival has announced they will cancel the 2021 festival, set to take place throughout September.
Known as New South Wales’ largest independent arts festival, the cancellation has impacted more than 1500 local artists and 40 venues.
However, Sydney Fringe also announced that it would accelerate its ongoing advocacy work with two support initiatives for the independent arts community affected by the festival’s cancellation.
Sydney Fringe Festival Director and CEO, Kerri Glasscock, said that the devastating decision was not made lightly, and congratulated the work that had been made, despite the chaos of the past 18 months.
“We are absolutely devastated to be cancelling a second festival. The impacts of this pandemic continue to wreak havoc on our sector,” they said.
“The resilience, passion, dedication, ingenuity and stoicism the independent arts community has shown over these past 18 months has been remarkable, and the quality of work they had produced for this year’s festival was exceptional despite all they had gone through.
“Sydney Fringe has long been one of the leading advocacy voices for independent artists in NSW and this is where we will once again turn our attention.”
Part of Sydney Fringe’s support initiatives includes securing critical new funding that will go directly to affected artists under the Create NSW Performing Arts COVID Support Package.
Alice Terry in Becoming Jimmy Rigg.
