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Dutch festival Frontier ‘gains permit’ for summer

The organisers behind Frontier Festival, a new Covid-safe event in the Netherlands, say it’s one of the first Dutch events to gain a permit for this summer.

The festival, which claims to have a ‘watertight concept’ that ‘fully adapts to the Covid regulations’, will take place outdoors with a fully domestic line-up of techno and hip-hop artists. The first edition will not be open to international guests.

Organisers say tickets for Frontier Festival will only be sold online and must be personalised and validated a few days prior to the event with proof of vaccination or a negative test no more than 72 hours old. The festival plans to use the health-check software of sister company Frontrow – a software platform with which a test result or vaccination certificate can be linked to tickets for events.

The date and location of Frontier are yet to be announced but the organisers say they are looking at sites that can host several thousand visitors, which will allow for sufficient social distancing.

“[Frontier] has taken into account all the measures that may apply and we are convinced that we can organise a safe festival”

The company behind the festival, Frontier Events, was founded last summer with the aim of organising Covid-safe festivals. One of the founders, Ibo Örgut, has been active in the events industry for over 20 years and was a partner in ID&T and Q-dance.

He now leads event-related companies such as Show Support Event Services and Frontrow Event Technologies.

“Massive events with tens of thousands of partygoers from left to right are not possible yet,” says Örgut. “Frontier will be a relatively small-scale festival with visitors from the region. We have taken into account all the measures that may apply and we are convinced that we can organise a safe festival in this way.”

Elsewhere in the Dutch festival sector, organisers are awaiting a government decision on a German-style cancellation fund ahead of the European summer season.

A spokesperson for minister of culture Ingrid van Engelshoven says she will announce whether her department is backing a ‘guarantee fund’ by early February at the latest.

 


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