With much sadness, the Whangārei Fringe Festival team announces the postponement of the 2021 festival, due to be held at multiple Whangārei venues from October 1 to 17.

The festival programme was just over a week away from being launched, and contained 134 events across music, comedy, circus, theatre, art, dance, digital technology and much more. More than half the events were by Northland creatives, and the remainder were from Auckland and around the country.

The safety and enjoyment of artists, volunteers and audiences is Whangārei Fringe’s top priority, and the current Covid situation has made it difficult to predict whether the festival could go ahead as planned.

The festival team is working to reschedule the festival towards the end of 2021, and plans to announce new dates in the next few weeks.

“It’s gutting to have to postpone the festival, especially since we were so close to releasing an amazing programme,” say co-founders Georgia-May Russ, Laurel Devenie and Hayley Clark. “But we need to play it safe and wait until this Covid outbreak has passed.

“Fringe is all about discovering weird and wonderful events in a city-wide celebration, and we want to create a big, exciting festival that people will feel completely comfortable attending.

“Because our festival is also a platform for new work, many artists won’t have had sufficient time to rehearse – which is another reason why we’ve decided to postpone until everyone can pull this off with a bang. So watch this space!”

For updates, please check www.whangareifringe.co.nz (sign up for the newsletter while you’re there), and follow the festival on social media.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/whangareifringe

Instagram: @whangareifringe

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