2020 Festival has now been cancelled due to the COVID situation in SA
The Festival committee have met and worked through the various issues and the decision has been made. It’s practical, sensible, loving and safe… and sad. Yes, we are cancelling this year’s festival, owing to the currently unpredictable situation here in SA. However, we are interested in having some kind of event or activity before the next festival, so stay tuned.
Some practical matters
- As we always planned and stated this year, we will refund in full what you’ve paid for tickets. We are incurring some losses in cancelling the festival, mostly booking fees. If, and it is a genuine if, you would like to help out with that, please email us and we will deduct any donation you care to make from your refund (If we don’t hear from you, we’ll happily refund your ticket in full). It all goes back into the fund for the next festival, which will now be 2021. We’ll be starting to process refunds from next week.
- If you booked and paid as a group, your tickets will be refunded to the account of the person who bought them – so please liaise with that person!
- Your accommodation bookings at the caravan park will be handled separately by Ben & Holly. Please be patient as there are a large number of people they will need to contact. If you need proof of cancellation for other accommodation or travel providers, please show them this message but if it’s a problem, make contact with us and we will see if we can help.
Next year’s festival will be a new event of its own, and we’re not planning comprehensively for it at this stag—we need a break! But as always, we’ll send out notifications of setting a date and of expressions of interest for performers and involvement.
As we said, we too are passionate about the Festival, and deeply unhappy about having to abort. So many people have put time into creating a fine event this year, with an excellent lineup of performers, and so many volunteers prepared to spend their time working to make it happen. We offer a particular acknowledgement also to Montz Matsumoto who was willing to come from Tasmania with the expectation of quarantine when he returned home. Hopefully we will see him here in the not too distant future.
Thank you all for your support and interest. Do stay tuned, we have some ideas for the interim. And we’d be happy to hear any of your ideas too.
The Program
The Festival program is now up on the 2020 Program page. Have a look at what we were planning…
Workshops
Thank you to all who had put their hands up to run this exciting program of workshops. Maybe next year…
- Ukulele: John Mansfield will run two workshops—one on ‘Making strums more interesting’ and another on ‘Clawhammer for Ukulele’.
- Singing: As four classically trained vocalists, Amber, Matthew, Emlyn and Jodie are excited to offer some classical techniques for folk singers.
- Bluegrass Fiddle with Geoff Bridgland
- Banjo with Montz Matsumoto
- Dobro with Leonard Cohen
- Harmonica with Mij Tanith
- South American music with Sally Millar & Jesse Hamilton
- Bluegrass guitar with Andrew Clermont & Tim Bailey
- Improvisation with Andrew Clermont
- Stringed instrument building with Tim Wright
- Creative thinking & writing with Caz Williams
