The health and safety of the community, festival-goers, volunteers and artists was a critical part of the committee's decision.

Down the Street was organised as a scaled down version of the usual festival as the committee worked to comply with COVID-19 restrictions.

Since announcing the Down the Street festival earlier this year the committee has been closely monitoring COVID-19 restrictions and advice from government agencies.

Factors that cemented the committee's decision included Public Health Orders updated on July 31 banning anything defined as a music festival, artists' inability to travel, guidance from Live Performance Australia, and COVID-19 cases continuing to be recorded in NSW.

"The lack of cultural activities in 2020 is a disaster. Events assist with everyone's mental health and general wellbeing and more emphasis needs to be placed on that," festival director Donna Ballard said.

"Regional areas will suffer further in terms of lost economic benefits that these events generate.

"Over the 'rest' time in the next months, we will be working on ways we can continue to develop arts in our community, and our crew is determined to keep forging forward and be stronger from this."

The Akoostik Festival team is committed to bringing live music and entertainment across multiple genres to the regional town of Wingham.

"We love what we do, our town and our supporters and we will be back when the time is right," Donna said.

"We send out our support to the arts and entertainment community in Australia who have been hit hard during the ongoing pandemic."