The Cairns-based festival The Grass Is Greener announced the news ahead of Canberra's event this weekend.
In a major blow to the Australian festival community, The Grass Is Greener Festival has cancelled two of its four events for 2022, with the Canberra edition on Sunday, October 23 and the Geelong edition on Sunday, October 30 no longer going ahead.
North Queensland festival, which will still take to its regular locations in Cairns and Gold Coast, announced the news today citing increased costs of running an event in a post-covid world, and slow ticket sales making the expansion of the festival unviable.
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“As we believe in honesty and ethical practice, we also believe in sharing the circumstances truthfully with you. The reason for cancellation doesn’t rest upon a single factor. Rather, it’s related to the culmination of multiple elements that have affected not only us but our industry partners and siblings across the entire event industry in the COVID/post-lockdown period,” the festival shared in a statement.
“Festivals start being planned at least 12 months in advance. After a successful 2021 campaign in Cairns, Townsville, Toowoomba, Mackay, and Gladstone, we were excited to finally take TGIG to other states, and expand nationally. Like many others, we expected purchasing behaviour to return to pre-pandemic levels, curating a lineup that we felt our loyal customers deserved.
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“In that time, there have been staggering, exponential cost increases across the board – from staging, production and site infrastructure to security, portable toilets and more. We’ve been running large-scale events for seven years, and have not – during this time – seen such sharp increases within such a short period. This has drastically affected our planning to an unprecedented degree.
“Understandably so, consumer confidence and purchasing behaviors have completely changed. With so many reschedules and the nature of conditions over the past two years, we understand why, too.
“From an event standpoint, especially heading into these new markets, a festival team relies on certain milestones to enable us to run events successfully. What’s more, the weather warnings we’re receiving from Canberra and Geelong have also played a large role in this decision. While the shows were selling slower than predicted, we still had full intention of seeing them through – loss or otherwise. However, when coupled with the chance that sites might not even be built due to the impending weather, we knew we had to make a call as soon as possible.”
Presented by Handpicked Group, The Grass Is Greener Festival is one of Queensland’s most adored music, food and art festivals.
Starting as a pipedream amongst mates, The Grass Is Greener quickly became the marquee festival in the FNQ. Since its triumphant debut in 2016, the then two-stage event began to play a vital role fostering local emerging Australian artists in regional centres alongside major Australian acts Amy Shark, All Day, Hayden James, Ocean Alley and spotlighting international hip hop artist Tyga when he was at the height of his career.
Last year’s festival featured an all-Australian lineup that included the likes of Crooked Colours, Ziggy Alberts, Young Franco, Boo Seeka, Winston Surfshirt, George Maple, Jordan Brando and Jesswar, to name but a few.
The festival originally intended to expand the festival nationally in 2020, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that they announced additional locations of Geelong and Canberra.
Due to the cancellation of the two legs, ONEFOUR, Ty Dolla $ign, Zhu and Maya Jane Collins will no longer will joining the remaining Grass Is Greener festival dates.
Refund information will become available in the next 7-14 days. All Canberra and Geelong tickets will be valid for the Gold Coast and Cairns editions and for YG’s Melbourne sideshow on Monday, October 31.
For more info, head here.
