A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
IT takes persistence and experience to run a major music festival, says Rhythm and Vines founding director Hamish Pinkham, especially in the regions where organisers have to pay special attention to locals’ needs.
Plans for Gisborne’s three-day R&V are going well. After a second roll-out of acts was announced lastmonth ticket demand rocketed with early-bird tickets selling out and camp sites going fast, too.
For other festivals, however, things have not been so rosy.
In mid-October, Auckland’s Labour Day event Soulfest was cancelled due to poor ticket sales.
Then the following day news broke that the newly-launched McLaren Valley Festival – to be held in January and R&V’s closest potential competition – was reducing from three days to two and moving from rural Tauranga to Auckland.
Festival director (and former R&V staffer) Paxton Talbot said negotiations with residents in the area had failed to resolve a number of outstanding concerns.
And that was also given as the reason for the cancellation of Fat Freddy’s Drop’s planned New Year’s Eve concert at Whangamata.
On a more positive note, the new Auckland City Limits Festival (developed by the same team that managed the now-defunct Big Day Out) has secured Western Springs Park for a one-day festival on March 19.
