SXSW Cancellation: A Message From CIMA

By External Source

SXSW issued a statement last Friday stating, “The City of Austin has cancelled the March dates for SXSW. SXSW will respect the decision of the City, County and Austin Public Health and will do their part to help protect our staff, attendees, and fellow Austinites”.

Due to this cancellation, CIMA and our Canada House partners will reluctantly cancel our participation in SXSW. As an organization, we have had partnerships with SXSW since 2006, producing various business events, our Canadian Blast BBQ and Canada House. It will be strange not to have our usual March break jaunt down to Austin, with a large contingent of the Canadian music industry and hundreds of Canadian musicians.

We are especially devastated for all of our longtime colleagues at SXSW and the venues in Austin, who worked so hard to put on this amazing event for the past 34 years, As well as our main Canada House producer, Telefilm, who’ve been tirelessly working on this next edition of Canada House for almost a year with the support of the Government of Canada, and the Canadian Consulate in Dallas. CIMA thanks our music partners, MusicOntario, Manitoba Music, the City of Toronto, SaskMusic, and Alberta Music for all of their wonderful help in the programming and marketing of the event.

To all the Canadian and international industry participating in our events and SXSW, we know what an important annual event this is for your business and your artists. To the artists, we are deeply sorry for you to have to miss this fantastic opportunity to showcase at one of the biggest music industry festivals in the world – we know how much work has gone into preparing for these shows.

And finally, thank you to our partners and sponsors, the Department of Canadian Heritage, Ontario Creates, FACTOR, Radio Starmaker Fund, Stingray Music, SOCAN Foundation, ReSound and SOCAN -- we deeply appreciate your understanding and support with this unprecedented situation.

For those Canadian music industry delegates who have registered to attend SXSW in 2020, you can opt to defer registration to 2021, 2022, or 2023. You don’t need to take immediate action as it will remain in the SXSW system for future opportunities, according to SXSW.

If you have any questions, please email reg@sxsw.com. If you have booked a hotel through SXSW Housing & Travel, your reservation will not be automatically cancelled. To change or cancel your reservation please follow the instructions in your SXSW Hotel Reservation Confirmation email.

For the official statement from SXSW, link here

Thank you.

Stuart Johnston

President