ARTS cancellations continue to mount in light of the coronavirus.

The Canberra Comedy Festival has been cancelled outright, as well as the Sydney Writers’ Festival, which had expected to see 437 writers from 14 countries appearing across 346 events from April 27 to May 3.

But some enterprising arts organisations have devised temporary coping strategies.

The Street Theatre, for instance, has installed hand sanitisers available for all patrons and staff in the foyer, sterilised high-touch areas including door handles, toilet locks, hand rails, switches and buttons, and reduced its house capacity to allow social distancing — a possible lead to other performance venues.

The Mother Tongue Multilingual open mic session on Monday, March 23, has been cancelled, but organiser Jacqui Malins suggests that poets use the Mother Tongue Facebook page as a “virtual open mic” by recording a video of themselves reading or reciting a poem in their chosen language(s) and with and English explanation.

Yesterday evening (March 16) the Canberra Theatre announced that performances up until Sunday, March 22, has been cancelled but that a further update on future performances will be made this Wednesday, March 18.

Musician Michael tells “CityNews” the Canberra Artists Action Group is coming out of hibernation to take steps to mitigate risks facing the ACT arts during the COVID-19 crisis in an open online meeting at facebook.com/groups/1796707080567371 at 12.30pm, tomorrow, Wednesday, March 18.

A revision of the Canberra International Music Festival’s plans is expected to be announced soon.