Woodford Folk’s 30th sets new attendance record
The Woodford Folk Festival in Queensland celebrated its 30th birthday by growing 8% and setting a new attendance record – of 126,996 over six days, according to founder Bill Hauritz. The festival, staged December 27 to January 1, grossed $6.15 million at the box office.
Crowd attendance was up 8% from 2014/5, which itself was a 3% from the previous year. The Woodfordia site the 67th largest town in Australia for the duration. It includes 35 venues, 17 bars (which sold 20km of drink tickets) and 180 food, craft and merchandise stalls, coordinated by 2896 volunteers with the crew representing 20 countries.
It included its own postal service: the intimate Lettering House venue saw 20, 000 letters written and over 8000 letters delivered.
“Our expectations were definitely exceeded” said festival founder and Director, Bill Hauritz. “We challenged ourselves to rethink the entire festival layout and venues. With the changes came an entirely fresh visual look to the festival, and from the tremendous feedback we are getting it’s without question our best received ever.”
In 2015/6, 405 acts played 1945 shows on 25 stages. Highlights included ovations for full-capacity sets by Michael Franti, Courtney Barnett, Ed Kuepper, San Cisco, Marlon Williams and Kim Churchill at the 25,000-capacity Amphi amphitheatre and a collaboration by Macedonia’s Grande Uska Kan Orkestar with the Grande Spectacular Circus.
Holidaying UK folk troubadour Passenger, who played the festival before his break-through, attended each day as an audience member. However on New Year’s night he asked to play an impromptu one-hour set: his appearance was not announced until 30 minutes before he went on at 10.30 pm but he drew 600 fans to at Bill’s Bar.
The 30th anniversary saw a greater focus on visual arts and the strongest cultural program in its history. The highlight of the latter was indigenous civil rights lawyer Noel Pearson and former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke holding conversations on Indigenous Constitutional Recognition, and Australia’s future. The introduction of a new layout and new venues set up the festival for the next decade, Hauritz reported.
Woodford Folk started with the theatrical Welcome Ceremony and ended six days later with a mesmerising Fire Event spectacle of thousands of lanterns and a heavenly chorus that touched the themes of the festival – sustainability, hope and oneness with nature. The arrival of 2016 was marked with the traditional three minute silence and the Tibetan ritual chant at the Sunrise Welcome Ceremony – during which Tim Chaisson of one of the acts on the bill, Canadian roots trio The East Pointers, married visual artist and yoga teacher Jen Allen.
Hauritz said in his welcome address, “There’s been a conscious effort to carve out our own Woodfordian identity, a shared vision that might pitch us into our future. We’d hoped in the early years that the word ‘Woodford’ might conjure in people’s minds beautiful images of art, ideas, inspiration and contribution. We were ambitious in building meaning into that identity and social responsibility into its fabric.”
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