‘It Simply Wasn’t Meant To Be’: Earth Garden Cancels One-Off September Gathering
“With a heavy heart, we will have to postpone,” Howard Keith Debono announced this morning, revealing that the Earth Garden Gathering which was set to go down on 7th September at Gianpula has been cancelled.
Following the initial cancellation of the popular Earth Garden festival earlier this summer due to Malta’s first wave of COVID-19 cases, some events and festivals had been rescheduled or adapted to happen this August and September… but with fresh cases being registered every day and new measures being implemented just a week ago, it seems like Malta will yet again have a dry spell of events.
“We did our best to produce the Earth Garden feeling in 2020 but public health & safety come first,” Howard Keith elaborated.
“It simply wasn’t meant to be,” the organiser continued. “All tickets will be automatically refunded – Let’s hope to see you next year for the Earth Garden Festival!”
Just this morning, Debono had taken to Facebook to open up on Malta’s recent spike… and the potential reasons behind this.
“As a person being directly effected with numerous event cancellations, alongside all of my colleagues from different sectors, I have no problem in stating that everything, including irresponsible events, happened too fast,” Debono said on Facebook, sharing an interview with Malta Hotel and Restaurant Association’s (MHRA) president Tony Zahra which had Zahra saying “we possibly opened for mass events too fast.”
“We’re All suffering, but the majority of events being cancelled voluntarily are doing so NOT because they’re acting illegally, but because we have a conscious & people (our clients) rightfully so, have no trust in events at the moment,” Debono continued. “They probably won’t have till a vaccine is circulated.”
“I hate finger pointing as others are doing towards our industry. We can sugar coat it as much as we want but the reality is that our borders definitely opened TOO fast,” Debono reiterated. “We were on the right path. Had restrictions been legally enforced at the boarders alongside all mass gatherings, things might have turned out abit differently. We could also have used internal tourism instead of charging €75 for a sun bed at a pool. Let me add, Tourism borders still don’t have restrictions & unlike the tourism industry, our industry was NOT compensated in millions like other counties were. Furthermore, our industry is now at annex C as opposed to A. All this makes no sense at all & NOW unacceptable.”
Meanwhile, four massive UK festivals which were all slated for the end of August and early September were also cancelled.
BPM Festival, Escape 2 The Island, Back.In The Future and Rhythm + Waves all suffered the same fate last Friday.
What do you make of this? Tag an Earth Garden fan!
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