Festival experiments postponed due to the weather

The two experimental festivals that were scheduled to happen in Biddinghuizen this weekend, were postponed due to the expected stormy weather, the organizers announced on Friday. The Back to Live Dance Festival will be held next week Saturday on March 20, and the Back to Live Pop Festival a day later.

According to organizer Fieldlab, the goal of the festival experiments was to see if large numbers of people can safely spend an extended period together in a festival setting. But weather expectations of strong wind, rain and low temperatures mean that Fieldlab expects people to not stay outside for very long. That means the results of the experiment will not be representative, and visitors' experience will be far from pleasant.

"This is a painful decision and we hope for the understanding of the public, the artists and the suppliers," Marcel Elbertse of Fieldlab said. All participants in the experiments were tested for the coronavirus on Thursday. They will have to do that again next week.

"We find it extremely frustrating that after hard work and several postponements, we now have to move the events by a weekend due to the weather conditions. We deeply realize that we are asking a lot from our audience, suppliers and artists, but we saw no other solution. We are very busy pushing the full line up through to next weekend," the team at MOJO and ID&T said.

Both events will take place between 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. next weekend at the Walibi Holland event site in Biddinghuizen. Named tickets remain valid for the new dates. If ticket holders cannot attend next weekend, they can return their tickets via Paylogic before the end of Sunday. Any returned tickets will go on sale again on Monday at 4:00 p.m. The attendees will be personally contacted about this.