Organisers announce focus shift, cancellation of summer music festival HAYDAYS
After just one year, HAYDAYS has been sacrificed for the future of a longer-running festival, Party in the Paddock. Here’s what the organiser had to say.
Tasmania
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A Tasmanian music festival that burst onto the scene in 2023 will not go ahead this year, but organisers haven’t given up on the party yet.
Festival and artistic director at Vibestown Jesse Higgs said Vibestown, the event organiser behind HAYDAYS and Party in the Paddock, was “battening down the hatches” and focusing on the survival of their “first baby” after announcing HAYDAYS would not go ahead in 2024.
“We need to make sure our priorities are very focused on the big picture of surviving this summer,” Mr Higgs said after a spate of festival cancellations since the pandemic.
He said while their newest endeavour HAYDAYS was well attended at its debut in December it was “harder than ever” to be hosting large scale, multi-day music festivals.
“We are just making sure we give Party in the Paddock, which is our first original child, full attention this summer,” Mr Higgs said.
He said there was a real need for people to get around the beloved festival, so it doesn’t suffer the same fate as other festival greats like Splendour in the Grass, Falls and Byron Bay Blues Festival, which have all been cancelled.
“It’s one of the only festivals left standing in the country this summer,” Mr Higgs said.
He said the economics of running large-scale music festivals with international acts was “no longer making sense” in the cost-of-living crisis, and the company had to be careful not to spread itself, or the Tasmanian audience, too thin.
This is coupled with the Australian music scene suffering greatly since the pandemic, with a lack of touring and international artists apparent, he said.
Mr Higgs said Vibestown was “fully invested” in the HAYDAYS festival and had “full intention to bring it back in the future”.
He said Vibestown had optimism that the Tasmanian government would provide some support in the future.
He said he had been “making a strong case that our events are very important to the cultural identity of Tasmania and how important it is to have internationally acclaimed entertainment at our doorstep”.
“It would be a real shame to lose that,” he said.
Mr Higgs was optimistic about the next Party in the Paddock, which runs from Thursday February 6 to Sunday February 9 2025 at Carrick, with an exciting line-up to be announced on Tuesday October 15.
HAYDAYS was a new endeavour for the Tasmanian events company, with the two-day non-camping music festival in Cornelian Bay debuting in December 2023.
Electro-pop sensation PNAU and indie-rock and dance-punk group Foals headlined the inaugural event.
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