Taranaki Arts Festival Trust regrets to advise our audiences and our community that we have had to make the difficult
decision to postpone our RESET festival for 2021.
With the continuing uncertainty around COVID-19 restrictions, we cannot proceed with RESET as planned. Many factors have
contributed to this heartbreaking decision. While we support and understand the Government's decision to apply
restrictions nationally was required to slow the spread of the Delta variant, it has made delivering our ten-day
festival programme hugely challenging.
With many artists based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, there is uncertainty over their ability to travel outside of the
region and its higher alert level, along with their inability to rehearse for shows while they are in lockdown.
While Alert Level 2 does allow for limited gathering indoors, our festival shows require a much greater capacity to be
viable for TAFT. With physical distancing in the venues, the experience for our audiences and artists is also
compromised under current restrictions. We want to bring people together, not have us seated apart. We want to get our
wider community together, not have us restricted in numbers.
Thankfully our Through The Eye of Taranaki exhibition and the Community Events programme will continue as planned, in collaboration with Track Zero. We'll be sharing more news on this in the coming
weeks.
We have made a significant commitment to many artists and our audiences, who were very much looking forward to being
part of RESET 2021. We are working through rescheduling artists for our 2022 festival programme.
Taranaki Arts Festival appreciates those who have purchased tickets bearing with us as we work with Ticketek to managing
the Festival's postponement. Our 2022 RESET Festival will be presented 9-19 June, and we hope that many of you hold on
to your tickets till this date. If you can not make these dates, refunds will be offered.
To ensure the arts continue to thrive in Taranaki, we ask you to consider donating your refunded tickets or a portion of
your ticket to support Taranaki Arts Festival Trust in delivering programmes in the future. More information on how to
do this will be available on our website in the coming days.
We know the arts matter more than ever, and we're already looking ahead to 2022 and beyond.
The Taranaki Arts Festival would like to acknowledge and thank all festival partners, patrons and sponsors for coming
together to make our festivals a reality. Without their support, we wouldn't be able to deliver or present the calibre
of performances we bring to the Taranaki region.