For the second straight year the COVID-19 pandemic has forced organisers to cancel Kiama's annual Folk By The Sea music festival.
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The two-day festival was scheduled to take place on September 24-25.
Festival artistic director David De Santi felt bad for the volunteers and musicians, adding the decision was extremely disappointing, but unavoidable.
"With the announcement by the NSW Government of the extension of the lockdown for another four weeks, we have had to make the tough decision to cancel the 2021 Folk by the Sea festival," Mr De Santi said.
"Even though it's eight weeks away, we believe it's too large a financial and safety risk to press on."
Mr De Santi said while Kiama wasn't one of the local government areas in lockdown, it was still subject to statewide restrictions on the size of gatherings as a result of the third wave of COVID-19 infections that have hit NSW.
"Many of our artists, volunteers who run the festival and our target audience live in areas that are currently in lockdown - Greater Sydney, Wollongong and Shellharbour," he said. "So we reluctantly came to the conclusion that we couldn't press on in the hope that things might improve by September.
"It is extremely disappointing, but these are the times we are living in. Community safety is the most important thing."
Mr De Santi said that having been forced to cancel the 2020 and 2021 festival, organisers were determined to plan for Folk By The Sea to return in 2022. "Hopefully it will be third time lucky next year," he said.
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