Gaian Dream

Dear Psytrance Family,

We tried our utmost best to make Gaian Dream 2023 happen but unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans for us. These last few weeks have seen the most rainfall in the area in over 50 years. Farmers have lost an incredible amount of money (with many of them declaring bankruptcy) during this last month and there was absolutely no way for them (and us) to predict the amount of rain which was received.

In this statement we will describe: 1 – Our intentions, 2 – What happened, 3 – How we can improve & 4 – Compensation plans.

1 – Our intentions – We intend to create a SAFE space for people to be free and dance to amazing music. Our focus is on safety above all else. The safety of our guests comes before music, dancing and everything else. If we feel that the safety of our guests is compromised, we will do everything in our power to rectify that – including shutting down all music stages and asking people to evacuate only when it is safe to do so. We don’t host festivals for profit (because there is none), we do it to keep the psychedelic scene alive in Cape Town, and we do it because we love doing it. Extreme weather conditions is a risk one assumes when hosting and when buying tickets to outdoor festivals in Cape Town.

2 – What happened – We tried our best to avoid a cancellation. We took the unprecedented step of postponing Gaian Dream to 1 week later to avoid a cancellation and to try give our patrons the festival they deserve. This came at great expense, both financially and emotionally.

During setup week, the weather forecast started to change, around 30mm of rain was predicted (something we have easily handled in the past). Unfortunately, every single weather report was entirely inaccurate as we received over 100mm of rain in 48 hours. This was an unforeseeable disaster situation – nothing could have prepared us for it and there is no amount of preparation that could’ve ensured everyone’s safety during such extreme conditions.

On Saturday morning, when the rivers onsite started to wash over the bridges we decided to not restart the music and to cancel the entirety of Saturday. The initial idea was to restart the music on Sunday morning. This decision was taken purely out of safety. The roads were extremely dangerous, the fields waterlogged and muddy, and the river onsite was out of control. If we had continued we would’ve put lives at risk. Life if more important than dancing.

The weather was forecast to clear up on Saturday afternoon but unfortunately all forecasts were wrong again. The rain continued with increased severity and at around 5pm on Saturday all the bridges that link the parking/camping areas and dancefloor areas washed away. No 4×4 could cross. No person could cross. The only way to get from the dancefloor area to the camping/parking areas was an 8km trip offroad 4×4 trip from the emergency farm entrance to the festival farm entrance.

After the bridges washed away, we deemed it too unsafe to continue and decided to cancel the festival entirely. This was the absolute last thing we wanted to do as every single step we took up until this point was to avoid a cancellation. We advised people to stay onsite until Sunday and leave when it was safe to do so. The roads were extremely unsafe and sending people home in 100mm of rain would not be acting with safety as a priority.

From this point onwards our focus shifted from “keeping the party going” to “keeping everyone safe”. Our time was spent towing people out of the mud, delivering food, arranging tents for people stranded, dealing with communications from parents and loved ones etc. We tried to reach everyone but obviously we could not. We made the announcement on social media to not attend at around 3pm on Saturday. We denied entry to everyone from this time onwards. No tickets were sold from this point onwards.

Our focus was not on keeping a dancefloor of any sort going as having intoxicated people trying to continue the festival during deadly conditions is unsafe. We had limited mobility, our crew had limited mobility, our ambulances would’ve needed to be towed into position if there was an incident. It was a complete disaster situation and we acted with safety as our priority.

Once the weather cleared up on Sunday, everyone was safe to leave. We were only able to safely cross the river with a 4×4 at around 11am on Sunday. The bridges were washed away, the roads were still dangerous, the fields were still incredibly muddy, our shade canopy was completely destroyed and shade poles on the main dancefloor had collapsed – this is a completely unsafe situation that would’ve taken around 48 hours of non-stop labour in order to fix. There was absolutely no possibility of restarting the festival on Sunday as we had originally planned. The decisions we made during this time were not made lightly and always with the safety of our guests first and foremost. This extreme weather was purely an “Act of God”. We did everything we could, given the extreme disaster situation.

3 – How we can improve – Communication, our onsite communication was disjointed and sporadic – the only way we could communicate with people onsite was by sending staff to relay our messages and given the conditions of the fields and the non-stop torrential rain, this task proved extremely difficult and clearly not everyone was reached. We have come up with a solution to never allow this situation to happen again. We are in the process of procuring a notification app for Android and iPhone which connects to our onsite Wi-Fi intranet to notify our guests onsite of any updates. We believe this is the most efficient and direct solution.

Access over the river – We are in discussions with the land owner about building a permanent suspension bridge over the river which would allow us to cross even when the river is in full flood. This would at least allow us to continue with the festival if this situation ever happens again.

Postponement – We will never postpone an event again. We will cancel and issue partial refunds.

Date – We are in negotiations with the land owner to change the Gaian Dream date to early November. Our festival dates are based on the farming calendar so this is always difficult.

Suppliers – we are going to be changing a few suppliers after this festival. We do not want to announce exactly which ones but we have taken every DM and email we’ve received to heart and be sure we will be acting on them.

4 – Compensation – We are going to go above and beyond what the law requires in this particular scenario. We will be issuing partial refunds for Saturday and Sunday tickets. Please email us on organik@organik.co.za with your ticket reference number and we will begin refunding. Please be patient here as it will take a few weeks at least to work through every request. If you bought merchandise and haven’t received it yet, please email us and we can arrange a time and place for a pickup – if a pickup is not possible we can arrange delivery.

Big Love, The Organik Team