Bath Festivals Statement 09.10.2020

Update on November weekend literature events

Our small team has been working hard to find a way to go ahead with the rescheduled weekend of literature events in November. These events were originally part of The Bath Festival programme in May 2020 which was cancelled due to the pandemic. The importance of place cannot be underestimated for festivals and the plan had been to live stream events from the Bath Assembly Rooms with restricted audience due to required social distancing. However, the continuing uncertainty about the direction of the pandemic, when taken together with reduced revenues from limited seating capacity and the growing number of local lockdowns, increasing the possibility of authors not being able to join us, means the risks in continuing remain too high.  This combination of reasons has led the team to accept that cancelling is the only right decision. We are enormously disappointed that we cannot move forward.

However, there is also positive news to report. We have just completed our hugely well received online Reading is Magic Festival which replaced the schools programme that would have normally been in our Bath Children’s Literature Festival. We are also working closely with Visit Bath and other arts organisations across the city in shaping an exciting four week programme of events happening in the run-up to Christmas, – Bath at Christmas. Further details will follow on this shortly as we so look forward to celebrating the arts with you once again.