The North’s most innovative festival has been unable to programme its way around the latest Coronavirus restriction flip-flopping
Translated by Thomas Ansell
Welcome to the Village festival, usually held in Leeuwarden’s De Groene Ster country park, has been cancelled at very short notice for 2021. The 2020 edition of the festival was put off for a year, but thanks to the Dutch government’s ‘one step forward and two steps back’ Coronavirus policy, the 2021 edition has also had to be cancelled at short notice. As reported by the Omrop Fryslân.
The organisers had tried to find a new way of putting on the festival (after a mistake was made in a permit application at De Groene Ster), with a ‘bubble’ in Leeuwarden’s city centre having been planned as a contingency, however this too has proved impossible to pull off.
“Together with the Neushoorn, De Harmonie, and De Markies, we were busy coming up with a new festival area in the Harmonie quarter [of Leeuwarden], with performances at Neushoorn and De Harmonie, as well as a giga-terrace at De Markies. However, with the new regulations requiring one-and-a-half metres distancing, and a maximum of two thirds capacity we are unable to hold WTTV (Welcome to The City)- as we had named it.”
Everyone that has bought a ticket will receive their money back.
Image: the 2018 edition of the festival, by Wikimedia user DaanNoordhoek(Hans Jellema). License here.
