Celtic festival saves the date

EXCITEMENT is building throughout Portarlington and across Australia, with a ‘save the date’ message bringing hope for lovers of music and all things Celtic.

The National Celtic Festival has been planned for the last two years, with tickets to this year’s festival selling out in 24 hours, before COVID restrictions forced its cancellation just two weeks before the event.

Festival director Una McAlinden says the festival can’t survive a third cancellation but they are cautiously making plans for the Queen’s Birthday weekend in June and waiting for clear directions before taking the next step.

“It’s been a struggle, particularly for the arts,” Una said.

“We’ve been planning festivals and getting close and then not doing them so it’s kept us busy, but treading water and tentative of what’s ahead. It will be third time lucky for us.

“Once capacity numbers increase and there’s a pathway we can work with, hopefully by the end of the year, we could have tickets on sale by the end of the year.

“We’re working with partners to see if we can extend to next year and the response so far has been really positive.”

Una said they hope to carry over a lot of the planning from this year, while reinventing some of the festival with new acts who have already expressed interest.

“We’ve heard from a dance group from Darwin who want to come over, which is encouraging, and we’ve heard from people from Sydney and Canberra that they have their flights booked to come to festival,” she said.

“People are trusting that they want to come back as a festival community; I’m feeling quite good.

“It would normally be full steam ahead at this stage and we’re full steam ahead but crossing our fingers; there’s quiet excitement that we could be one of the first festivals that are back again.”