WITH the lifting of restrictions on indoor events on Monday, Celtic Connections has now confirmed that nearly 60 events will now go ahead in front of a live audience. Public safety measures put in place by the Scottish Government to combat the Omicron variant of Covid-19 had put this year’s festival in doubt.
Hold on, I thought it had already been cancelled.
No. A number of events have been cancelled, including the hugely popular Roaming Roots Revue, and others have been moved online as the festival tried to firefight in the face of venue restrictions.
But now that the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced that from Monday indoor events will once again be allowed, the festival has announced that a substantial part of this year’s programme will be able to go ahead as originally planned.
But the festival starts tonight, doesn’t it?
Yes, the opening night’s event, ’Neath the Gloamin’ Star, a performance by some of the new generation of Scottish folk singers, takes place at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall this evening in front of a restricted audience of just 200 people. It will also be filmed. However, venues won’t be able to fully open up until the safety measures lift on Monday.
So, who can we see over the next couple of weeks, then?
Musicians from all around the world, as well as many traditional musicians from Scotland and Ireland. Appearances by the likes of Anoushka Shankar, the Sharon Shannon Quartet, Blue Rose Code and the Grammy-nominated Pakistani composer and vocalist Arooj Aftab are all scheduled to appear (negative Covid tests permitting, of course).
This must be quite a relief for the organisers.
You would think so. It has been a fraught few weeks since restrictions were reintroduced towards the end of last year.
In 2020 Celtic Connections was one of the last events that managed to take place before Covid decimated the festival calendar. Last year the Glasgow festival moved online, attracting 30,000 viewers from 60 countries. But gala events like this need a live audience.
Why does all this matter?
For Glasgow, Celtic Connections, now in its 29th year, has been a reliable boost to the economy at an otherwise quiet time of year. In 2019 it generated £5.6m for the city and attracted 38,000 visitors. Those figures will be hard to match in 2022 given the uncertainty around this year’s event, but even so it should prove a useful fillip for the local economy, as well as promising a few good nights out.
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