The annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade will not be celebrating with its usual packed-streets and glitter-filled festivities in 2021.
Instead, the iconic Oxford Street parade will be replaced with a ticketed event at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday March 6, where floats will do a lap of the stadium.
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Organisers said in a statement: "In order to ensure the safety of parade participants, spectators and the community at large, the 2021 Parade will be held at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), where a capacity of 23,000 audience members will watch on as community groups unite in an extravagant show of pride and passion."
They also noted that the event will become the first internationally significant event to be staged since the spread of COVID-19 and will still be broadcast by SBS.
Mardi Gras CEO Albert Kruger added: "Mardi Gras has always been the epitome of creative expression through art and culture; two things severely impacted by COVID-19 this year."
"So it was important to Mardi Gras that we rise to the occasion and to give the community the creative platform to express their pride to the world.
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"The 2021 Parade may look different to how it has been in the past, but we feel very lucky to be able to give this opportunity to our communities during these times."
"The team at Mardi Gras have worked tirelessly with NSW Health to develop a COVID Safe event plan to ensure the Parade can go forward and we're excited by the prospect of staging the event at the SCG."
"Not only is the SCG close to our spiritual home of Oxford Street, but it also provides the safest venue for us to hold the event and meet requirements of physical distancing and contact tracing."
Apparently, next year's event will shift focus from large floats to 'the outlandish pageantry of costumes, puppetry and props that make it such a phenomenon to witness', with the theme for 2021 being 'RISE'.
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Parade entry and Parade volunteer applications open on Monday 9 November. Tickets for the live Parade spectacle go on sale Monday 9 November, here.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: covid, News, Australia