“It’s a very bad signal,” said Olivier Garnier, a spokesman for Hellfest, one of the largest events in France, in a telephone interview. Hellfest hosts around 60,000 heavy metal fans each year, and its iteration scheduled for June 2021 is already sold out.
On Monday, Hellfest sent a three-page letter to Roselyne Bachelot, France’s minister of culture, asking for certainty whether the event could take place and suggested that the festival could test attendees for the virus upon arrival.
On Tuesday, Bachelot rejected the idea that tests would be enough to make festivals possible. “It’s imaginative!” She told a French parliamentary committee, adding that festivals are an obvious potential place of broadcast where people sing, drink and dance together.
The picture is not entirely optimistic across the continent. In Denmark, festivals are preparing for it, said Esben Marcher of Dansk Live, an organization that represents festival organizers, in a telephone interview.
“Of course the news from Glastonbury is a big signal for the rest of Europe,” he said, “but I feel like building his website is a much bigger and longer process than it is for anyone else.” Glastonbury is taking months to prepare its fields to hold the event, Marcher said. Danish events could take place in a few weeks.
In December Roskilde, Denmark’s biggest festival in June, announced rapper Kendrick Lamar to headline. Signe Lopdrup, the executive director of Roskilde, said in an email that she was “cautiously optimistic”.
Comments are closed.