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At the height of the festival season, folk writer Pete Willow reflects on the continuing success of one such event. Warwick Folk Festival attracts 20,000 fans without the aid of corporate sponsors but through the efforts of a team of volunteers, headed by a local businessman whose day job is rooting out dry rot.
From Glastonbury to Glade, from Glyndebourne to Green Man – one thing that Britain is not short of is music festivals. Temporary road signs across the realm direct you every year to a huge choice of stadium-style events or village green gatherings. Over 300 of these are targeted specifically at folk fans.
While such ‘big name’ occasions as Cambridge and Sidmouth Folk Festivals do glimmer every so often in the national media spotlight, the sheer number of events that mobilise annual convoys of folk fans across the country says something about the popularity of this notably non-mainstream musical genre.
Warwick Folk Festival is a case in point. Add up all the tickets sold for the concerts and ceilidhs that took place in that town during the last weekend of July and you end up with a total of over 20,000 punters bringing at least half a million pounds into the local economy. And for the most part, they seem very happy to part with their cash.
‘Fabulous’, ‘outstanding’, ‘seriously brilliant’, ‘possibly the best weekend folk festival ever’ – these were just some of the accolades showered onto the organisers by satisfied emailers and Twitter users the following Monday morning. Not a bad achievement for a project that has been run by committee of willing volunteers for 32 years without a sniff of sponsorship from the likes of Virgin or Barclaycard.
Typical of many folk festivals, the annual event offers a diverse programme of concerts, dance displays, ceilidhs, music and song sessions, children’s entertainment, film shows, craft stalls and demonstrations plus workshops in anything from melodeon maintenance to performing in a samba band. The added attraction is Warwick itself – centrally located around one of focal points of England’s heritage industry, Warwick Castle, and steeped in historical charm, making it a definitive location for traditional entertainment and morris dancing.
The ticketed events take place in the well-appointed independent Warwick School, whose grounds are given over the main stage marquee, craft and food stalls, the festival bar and a sprawling metropolis of motor homes and tents. Each of these claims territorial rights within a temporary network of ‘streets’ marked out with ground ribbon and named after a traditional dance style or local folk performer – Cotswold Close, Longsword Lane, Maggie Coleman Crescent and so on.
A short (and free) bus journey takes you into the town centre, home of the ‘Warwick Fringe’ which comprises a wide choice of pub music and song sessions, café concerts, folk clubs, dance displays and an open air stage in the town’s Market Place giving free performances by festival guests and local artists.
Festival Director Dick Dixon recalls the first ever Warwick Folk Festival in 1979, a one-day affair with a concert, dance, pub music sessions and the ubiquitous morris dancers. He had shown his potential as a useful committee member the previous year by supplying a vanload of beer for a barn dance!
A genial Irishman, educated in Coventry and the owner of a local damp-proofing business, Dick has enjoyed the learning curve of running a folk festival. ‘It’s taught me skills that I never knew I had,’ he says. ‘One thing I’ve discovered is that if you really want things to happen, you can make them happen.’
On the festival’s 30th anniversary year, he was awarded the title of Honorary Freeman in recognition of the impact of the festival on the town’s culture and economy. He also finds time to work as Artistic Director for the smaller but prestigious Bromyard Folk Festival in Herefordshire.
Dick has now made many friends from the international folk community and receives regular invitations to visit festivals in Canada, the USA and Spain, enabling him to meet and book some of the leading folk names from those countries to appear at Warwick. But he has remained grounded in his approach to managing the festival, turning to local authorities and businesses for sponsorship and building up a strong team of assistant directors and volunteers.
This is made up of local folk fans lending their day-job expertise and such professional skills as management, finance, planning, risk assessment, marketing and so forth to make sure that the best acts appear at the right venues, the marquees are erected on time, the health and safety checks are done, the sound equipment works, the food and drink don’t run out and the army of venue managers, caterers, stewards, rubbish recyclers and toilet cleaners are primed and ready for the annual logistical challenge.
For each member of the committee, running Warwick Folk Festival has become a major commitment in time and energy. Many of them also hold down demanding day jobs but all of them deliver, giving credence to Dick’s philosophy that if you want a job done, ask a busy person.
Weeks of planning have already gone into meeting the challenge of next year’s event whose launch coincides with not only Cambridge Folk Festival but also the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Dick is also seeking out new and younger committee members to carry the Warwick torch for the next 25 years.
‘We’ve built up a fantastic team of highly skilled people over the years,’ he says ‘but we will have to stay on the ball to keep up the high standards that the Festival has reached.’
Thinking about it, Dick’s own day job may be part of the reason for Warwick Folk Festival’s success. There are striking similarities in the special skills needed to look after the festival and run a damp-proofing business – the ability to cast an eye over the whole structure, make sure that it is sound and take advance action to stop the rot setting in.
