Shetland Folk Festival
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Important message from the Shetland Folk Festival Committee:

It is with regret that due to the recent COVID -19 pandemic, we have decided to reschedule this year’s Shetland Folk Festival and our 40th celebrations till next year. We have not taken this decision lightly, but after weeks of consulting venues, musicians, stakeholders and volunteers; the health and wellbeing of everyone in our community (and those who wish to come here) must be our priority.

We want our 40th Festival to be a celebration of everything good about our islands, and recent measures such as global travel restrictions, limits on public gatherings and an understandable uncertainty amongst the most vulnerable in our community has led us to conclude that it’s better to wait another year to really do Shetland and its musical family justice.

With most of this year’s visiting acts already confirmed for 2021, we promise we will be back with another stellar line-up and we’ll be even more hungry to welcome world-class musicians and audiences back again come 29th April 2021. We will be in touch with members in the coming weeks regarding refunds and the opportunity to carry forward your membership to next year.

As disappointing as it may feel for everyone connected with the festival, we are aware that this situation is going to be difficult on the live music industry with many self-employed musicians/technicians/agents impacted. We therefore encourage our festival-goers to support artists you enjoy in whatever way you can. For example, purchasing albums or merchandise from some of the bands you are hoping to see next year… Maybe looking at learning a new instrument online… Or getting a tune written for a special occasion…
In the meantime, we wish everyone good luck and good health in what is a difficult and unprecedented situation. If our community shows the same spirit and resilience in this current time as it does during our festival each year, we have no doubt we will get through this.
Let’s make up for it in 2021!

Love,
Da Committee