Wellington's Homegrown has been postponed due to COVID-19 concerns

Publish Date: Monday, 16 March 2020, 11:10AM

Wellington's Homegrown festival has been postponed due to concerns over coronavirus.

Homegrown organisers today issued a statement confirming the music festival will not go ahead this weekend as scheduled and has been postponed until later this year.

"Homegrown will not be running as planned this weekend, 21st March, 2020," the statement reads.

"The decision has been made based on conversations with authorities and best practice advice given around COVID-19 and mass gatherings.

"Organisers will be postponing the festival for later in 2020 (date to be advised)."

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It's with an extremely heavy heart that we announce Homegrown 2020 will NOT be running this weekend. We are mindful that many of you have flights and accommodation that you may be able to save or change so we pushed to get an answer before the scheduled Government announcement. Based on the conversations with authorities and the advice given we will not be able to run this weekend. As you can see by the photos, our team have been working very hard to do everything we can to forge ahead despite such uncertain times. We are devastated and are looking at all options as to how we move forward. We will be postponing but as you can imagine the logistics of that are huge and we need to wait on Government advice for dates. As far as refunds go, unfortunately we don’t have a clear answer on that as there are many factors involved. We appreciate your patience as we work through all of this, and we will let you know as soon as we do. We are so grateful for all of your support and sincerely apologise for all of the inconvenience. Aroha nui, Homegrown

A post shared by Jim Beam Homegrown (@jimbeamhomegrown) on Mar 15, 2020 at 2:34pm PDT

Homegrown organiser Andrew Tuck said his team were "devastated" by the decision but understand it is the commonsense approach at this time.

"Unfortunately we are not able to run this weekend," he said.

"We are devastated, as the Waterfront build was looking awesome but we completely agree with the advice we have been given and we need to look at the bigger picture and what is best for the health of New Zealanders.

"We are grateful to all of our supporters and suppliers for their understanding in this tough and uncertain time."

This article was first published to the nzherald.co.nz and republished with permission.

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