Lismore Music Festival cancelled

A music festival that was to have coincided with Lismore’s popular Eat The Street event in March will now not go ahead, with organisers citing personal health problems, safety issues and difficulty negotiating with the council as well as negative feedback on its Facebook page.

Scott Cooper, who was co-organising the planned Lismore Music Festival with Paul Connelly, said in a Facebook post last night that the effort involved in trying get the event up had taken a toll on his health, adding he was still fielding interest from bands that wanted to perform.

Mr Cooper said ‘both organisers of this event have had health issues recently, some of which stems from trying to keep the event on track and the stress involved from that.

He added they’d had ‘major issues with safety in trying to have an outdoor stage, which was not foreseen as we believed the precedent was set already.’

‘As a consequence of these health issues and safety issues it has become impossible to continue to plan our event for March,’ he said.

‘We have tried our hardest to make this possible however the pressure was always on as we were trying to have the same date as the Eat the Street festival and have Lismore dancing in the streets.

‘No one is more upset than I am; I have spent all my energy recently in trying to get this off the ground.’

But Mr Cooper also said he was disappointed at some of the comments on his Facebook page, which he said were ‘uncalled for and make it clear to me that I cannot continue to be causing myself health problems for the sake of armchair critics.’

‘I thank all involved bands and apologise.

‘One thing is clear though from the response we have had: Lismore needs and wants a festival like this to go ahead. I am still getting emails from bands wanting to play.

‘I am sorry if you feel in any way we have let you down. Trying to get something like this off the ground is huge and unfortunately has proven to much for this time,’ Mr Cooper said.