Home County axes 2021 festival

The first of London’s seasonal festivals to make a 2021 announcement, Home County Music & Art Festival officially postpones its summer festival until July 2022

THE HOME COUNTY Music & Art Festival has officially postponed its 2021 Victoria Park festival until July 2022 due to ongoing pandemic concerns and uncertainty.

It’s the first of London’s seasonal festivals, which includes TD Sunfest, Start.ca Rocks the Park, London Ribfest and Craft Beer Festival, London Children’s Festival and the London Food and Craft Beer festival, to officially pull the plug on a 2021 event.

“This decision was extremely difficult to make,” Home County artistic director, Tim Fraser. “Although tremendous strides are being made towards ending the pandemic, it is still uncertain when it will be safe to gather together in groups as large as those experienced by the festival, which sees over 50,000 people through Victoria Park each year. Postponement was the only feasible option in order to ensure that our number one priority: ensuring the safety of all festival-goers, volunteers, vendors and musicians, was maintained.

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“We are all dreaming of the day when we can safely gather once again to enjoy music, food, shopping, and most of all, each other’s good company,” continues Fraser. “The decision to postpone was very difficult, but necessary under the current uncertainty. While we will be looking forward to resuming our in-person festival in 2022, we are looking at ways to entertain virtually, as well as safely and responsibly in the coming year.”

In an interview with the London Free Press, TD Sunfest founder and co-artistic director, Alfredo Caxaj, said the Sunfest will be held in some form from July 8 to 11, though at this point it has not yet been decided how the festival will be presented.

“We’ll make a final decision by middle or end of April,” said Caxaj. “We are still hoping for some kind of a hybrid programming, in-person with capacity limits and digital. But once again, we’ll decide that next month.”