Level 1 is here!

September 22, 2020

WORD Christchurch is welcoming the Government’s announcement that COVID-19 restrictions have eased to Level 1 for much of New Zealand, which will allow the WORD Christchurch Spring Festival to go ahead under more relaxed conditions, and will give more certainty and choice to festival goers.

At Alert Level 2, larger festival events were restricted to 100 audience members per event, but the change of levels now means more book lovers will get the chance to see their favourite Aotearoa New Zealand authors.

All 65 events will now have greater seating capacity and extra tickets are now on sale through the WORD Christchurch website.

“We had sold-out events almost as soon as we launched our festival programme,” says WORD Christchurch Programme Director, Rachael King. “We have been crossing our fingers for a move to Level 1 to allow us to release more tickets, and it’s great that we can now do that so our audience can have the chance to see some of our best writers and thinkers on stage.”

Many audience favourites, such as Adventurous Women, The Word Gala: Brave Worlds and The Great Word Debate were booked solid in the first days of the programme being announced.

Those who missed out on tickets, and were asked to join a waitlist, will now have the opportunity to secure their tickets.

The path to launching this year’s WORD Christchurch Spring Festival has been a challenging one for the WORD team, which had to revise its original programme due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the last several months have been spent redesigning a completely homegrown festival and there have been some anxious moments waiting on alert level changes.

Festival goers are encouraged to book tickets to events early, as the demand for tickets is high.

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