Festival Forum: Reboot & reset

Instead of spending the summer in the company of millions of fans, as planned, the major festival organisers spent the best part of 2020 in a frenzy of rescheduling and re-booking (and, if necessary, refunding), working with agents to preserve as much of their postponed events as possible for 2021 while minimising the headaches for everyone involved. As summer 2021 finally creeps into view for those in the northern hemisphere, what lessons are there to be learned from 2020’s big time out? And does the festival ecosystem still face the same challenges as this time last year, or have its priorities changed? A host of international festival heavyweights discuss moving on from 2020’s lost summer, and what they’ve found so far in 2021.