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New Zealand music festival Rhythm and Vines has been cancelled due to continuing uncertainty around COVID-19 in the country.<\/p>\n
Originally the festival had been moved from the New Year to Easter, but with restrictions still in place organisers said they would prefer to focus their attention on the 20th anniversary of the event.<\/p>\n
Hamish Pinkham, Rhythm and Vines co-founder, told\u00a0New Zealand news website Stuff<\/a>: \u201cGiven the health condition of the country, it\u2019s in our best interests to push things out until a safer period. These are big projects and we need a good lead-in time. We\u2019re currently not seeing enough visibility to give us confidence for Easter.\u201d<\/p>\n The festival had been cancelled after Gisborne, the city where the event is held, moved into the \u2018red\u2019 setting of the Government\u2019s plan to deal with coronavirus in December. The \u2018red\u2019 level limited gatherings to 100 people.<\/p>\n However, by December 30, the city had moved into the \u2018orange\u2019 setting which meant the festival could have taken place with the use of COVID-19 vaccination passes. The festival had already been rescheduled to Easter by this point.<\/p>\n Since January 23, the whole of New Zealand has been on the \u2018red\u2019 traffic light setting, which has proven difficult for many events including the ICC Women\u2019s Cricket World Cup<\/a> currently taking place in New Zealand and Australia.<\/p>\n With the ongoing uncertainty, Pinkham said that promoting the event had been difficult.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cWe had a lot of interest in it, but it never really got the momentum it deserved, just because of the situation.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the industry is feeling it \u2013 we\u2019re seeing a lot of cancellations across the board. We need to be back to normality to run the event, and have people mingling throughout the venue. Until we see that visibility from the health guidelines, we\u2019ll just wait.\u201d<\/p>\n The 20th anniversary event is due to take place in December, with a number of international acts already confirmed.<\/p>\n