COVID-19 hit Park City early in 2020 – right as 100,000 visitors were flying home from the Sundance Film Festival to points around the globe. In the weeks after the festival, Park City briefly had the highest per capita rate of COVID cases in the country.
Festival organizers are planning for a healthier outcome next time around. Festival Director Tabitha Jackson announced this week that vaccines will be required for everyone attending the 2022 festival in any capacity.
The next festival runs January 20-30, 2022.
In a memo to the Sundance community, Jackson wrote that 2022 will be bigger than last year’s hybrid festival, but still offer some hybrid elements. Masking policies and theater capacity will be determined closer to the festival.
Specifics around the festival’s processes for confirming people’s vaccine status will be finalized in the coming months.
“Sundance Institute based its decision to require vaccination for 2022 attendees upon careful consultation with category experts and as a duty of care for the larger Festival community and the local host communities in Utah,” said Spencer Alcorn, communications director for Sundance Institute. “
The announcement comes as cases of COVID’s Delta variant are surging in the country, and hitting unvaccinated people the hardest. Increasing numbers of employers and institutions such as colleges are implementing vaccine requirements to curb the spread of the virus.