Line-up sneaky peek

We’re putting the finishing touches to our new website in preparation for the announcement of the line-up, and the start of ticket sales on Jan 1st.

To whet your appetite for the 1st, here’s an exclusive glimpse at some of the line-up for 2008……..amongst the acts booked we have Richard Thompson (solo) , Lunasa and the Oysterband (both as a concert band AND a ceilidh band!).

Check back on the 1st for a full list and ticket details.

2008 Line-up announcement and ticket details

We will be officially announcing our line-up on January 1st 2008, and tickets will be available to purchase from this date – as usual you will be able to buy tickets online, over the phone or through the post.

The line-up and tickets details will be announced on our main website, here on the blog, in an email to our mailing list and to the press.

If you would like to buy tickets between now and the New Year (perhaps as gifts!), then this is possible, but ONLY over the telephone – you’ll need to ring Sandra on 01746 768813.

Hope you all have a great Christmas, and we’ll be in touch in 2008!

Festival Videos

We're busy putting the 2008 festival together, and we're expecting to announce artists and ticket details towards the end of this year, with tickets on sale in the New Year.....only a month or two to wait!

In the meantime, we have our videos from the festival on our website - they're broken down into days and there's almost an hours' worth of performances and interviews.

Shrewsbury Folk Festival 2007 videos

Submitted photos

In addition to the official photographs for the festival (available on our website here), we’ve opened up a gallery where festival attendees can submit their own pictures.

The details are listed on our website, but this is the chance for up to 5 of your pictures be hosted on the Shrewsbury Folk Festival website, and be viewed by over 100,000 people throughout the year!

We're sure you all have some great pictures out there, and we'd be thrilled to see them and share them with others.

There are no restrictions on what you can submit; we’ll happily host pictures of musicians, the site, your friends – basically, if it’s related to the 2007 festival and you’re happy to send it to us, then we’d be pleased to display it in our gallery.

2007 Festival Merchandise Blow Out!

We have a small number of shirts left over from the festival this year – we sold a large number of shirts over the weekend, but it’s inevitable that we would have a limited number of styles and sizes remaining.

We’re offering these shirts at just
£4 for adult sizes and
£3 for the child shirts
postage is £1.50 regardless of how many shirts you order.

We don’t have a huge amount of anything left, but those that are very limited are highlighted in italics and greyed out. As we sell out we'll remove the item (or size) from the blog.

If you'd like to order any of the items below please contact Sandra, email and phone details are on the main festival website, thanks.

The details of availability and sizes are below, if you'd like exact measurements these are listed in the comments section of this post.

Blue Small Logo
Small , Large, XLarge

Brown Small Logo
XLarge

Childs Logo Shirt Orange
Medium, Large

Green S*F*F fitted girls/ladies shirt
Small , Medium, Large, XLarge

Green S*F*F - unisex
sold out

Black Large Logo
Medium, Large, XLarge

We also have a small number of posters available;
these are rolled in a tube and cost £4.00 plus £1 postage.

Artists' report - part 4

The festival’s patron, John Jones of the Oysterband, came to check out the site and was full of praise for the new home of the Shrewsbury Folk Festival.

The Oysterband played the festival in The Quarry last year but John said the new location had sealed the success of the event.

“It’s a fantastic venue. I have walked around the site and looked at it and it’s great, everything in one place.”

John also had great words for the main stage at the showground site – “Any artist would want to perform on that stage – the lights are good, the sound is great, it’s a brilliant venue to play.”

A stalwart of festivals and an artist who has performed many times at the festival is comedian and musician Keith Donnelly. He performed on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and reflected on the festival he has seen to grow over the years.

“I’m never happier than at a folk festival,” he said. “A folk festival is the best audience bar none – I really enjoyed this year but I’ve never been heckled by so many dogs before!”

Keith, who performed at the festival in its town centre location last year, summed up the 2007 event. “It feels like the Shrewsbury Folk Festival has come home.”

Artists' report - part 3

Kathryn Tickell was another artist who made the long journey to Shrewsbury – despite a 5.30am start from her North East home, Kathryn and her band had the festival audience on their feet. She’s no stranger to Shropshire having performed in Bridgnorth several times before, but it was her first time at Shrewsbury.

She said the early start had been worth it: “I really enjoyed the gig. I had the feeling it was going to be a disaster – one of the band had been performing the ceilidh tent for two hours and one had to run over to be in time and had been at Shrewsbury on Friday, then at Towersey on Saturday and came back to the festival on Sunday. But it was a really good crowd.”

Another group delighted with the Shrewsbury set-up was contemporary folk duo Megson, who performed on the main stage on Sunday afternoon before carrying out a songwriting workshop and another set in marquee two.

Their fresh approach of combining traditional folk elements with influences like Simon and Garfunkel received rousing support with the Shrewsbury crowd.

“This is the nicest festival we’ve performed at this year, “said Stu Hanna. “The site’s very good.” The other half of Megson, Debbie Palmer, enjoyed the backstage facilities too: “Some of the places we’ve played you end up having to change and put up your make-up in the toilets – it’s not glamorous!”

The “really good” crowd vibe continued into the final day of the festival on Monday which saw the event culminate with legend Paul Brady receiving a standing ovation for his incredible set which marked the end of a hugely successful festival.

Earlier, the American bluegrass four piece Crooked Still had got a rapturous response for their storming performance which saw cello player Rushad Eggleston strip to his underwear - having only started in a shirt, boxer shorts and a hat!

Despite having jetted in from Denmark following three days at the Tonder festival, the performance was one of the highlights of the festival, packing out the main stage on Monday afternoon. The band’s catnap backstage in their hired van helped them catch up from their 4.30am start for their flight to Manchester.

Rushad and banjo player Greg Liszt both said a lack of sleep often gave the band the adrenaline rush they needed to perform well.

“It was a great audience, a great feeling,” said Rushad. “You could feel the energy.” The artists’ facilities also got the thumbs up from the group despite their fleeting visit – with Rushad’s high jinks with sugarcubes, washing up liquid, and leaping over tables livening up the backstage complex! .”

Artists' report - part 2

One band adding an international flavour to this year’s festival was Canadian trio The Wailin’ Jennys. Their set included everything from an Emmylou Harris classic to a song inspired by a mosquito at 4am and ended with ‘One Voice’, a song that perfectly illustrated why the Jennys are enjoying such outstanding success.

Nicky Mehta, one of the founding Jennys, said the crowd at Shrewsbury reflected the growing popularity that folk based music is enjoying across the UK and the rest of the world.
”We did a handful of concerts in the UK last summer but we’ve been busy in the US and Canada this year. It’s great to be in Shrewsbury.
”Looking out at the crowd, there was a real mix of ages including young people. You can really feel the resurgence of folk and traditional music in England.”

Acclaimed singer/songwriter Richard Shindell travelled from Buenos Aries to perform at Shrewsbury – his first performance in England in 10 years. Shrewsbury was the only folk festival he played on a whirlwind tour of seven concerts in the UK.
Despite very little sleep because of his gruelling schedule, Richard and his guitar held the audience in the main stage spellbound on Sunday evening, with a set that showed his talent as a writer and performer.

Speaking after his afternoon performance in marquee two, he said the audience had been attentive and he had been looking forward to performing on the main stage.
“It’s virgin territory for me, very few people know who I am. Out of the thousands in the audience maybe a couple of hundred will know who I am. I like that – it gives me a chance to show what I can do, and they won’t have heard my jokes before so they’ll laugh!”
Richard, who also did a ‘meet the artist’ session, was full of praise for the festival. “It seems a great place, everything is wonderful!”

Artists' report - part 1

Over the course of the festival, we had Jo (our festival PR advisor) speaking to a huge range of artists and gauging opinion on the festival and the new site – she obviously had a ball speaking to the artists, and the results are a four part piece that will appear on the blog over the next few days………

So, it’s all over for another year – but what did some of the artists think of the Shrewsbury Folk Festival at its new home?

As well as fantastic all-on-one-site facilities for festival goers, performers enjoyed a new approach to hospitality, with a special backstage complex of green rooms and a refreshment area to relax in.

Saturday night headliners Show of Hands had played the festival at its original location in Bridgnorth twice before but it was their first time in Shrewsbury. They raised the roof of the massive marquee to a standing room only crowd of 3,200 who packed the main stage to hear them.

Steve Knightley said it had come as no surprise that Shrewsbury had blossomed into the festival it has become.

“It was always a really well run festival, led by an ambitious organisation - you always had the feeling it would be going places.”

Performing at Shrewsbury saw the pair finishing off a punishing schedule of summer festivals, but Phil Beer said they had loved it.

“We been performing at about two festivals a weekend – anything from 500 paying guests at Dartmoor to this crowd at Shrewsbury - it’s been a mega year but we love it.”

Finishing off with an encore of ‘Roots’, the rallying call to rediscover our heritage through music like folk, Steve Knightley paid tribute to the crowd who responded “as only a folk festival crowd can”.

It was the first time at Shrewsbury for another act which takes folk festivals by storm – Salsa Celtica, the high energy performers who fuse traditional and latin music in an amazing blend.

Lead vocal Lino Rocha, who lead the band of 10 through a fast and furious performance, said Shrewsbury was in a prestigious list of other festivals the band had performed at this summer.

Speaking back stage before their late night session saw festival goers dancing in the aisle of the main marquee, Lino said the band’s schedule this summer had included Cambridge, the world music festival WOMAD and the “one where there is lots of mud” (aka Glastonbury). Salsa Celtica were going on to perform at gigs in Spain and the US in the month after Shrewsbury.

The band, made up of an eclectic mix of nationalities including Venezuelan, Scottish, Australian, Irish and Tanzanian, said they had been treated like “royalty” at the festival and thoroughly approved of the incredible main marquee, again full to capacity. Another happy customer!

Photos

There are a good number of photos from the festival already online, the official pictures by Sabine Hutchinson from Virtual Shropshire are here

Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday

but there are hundreds of shots on the web from visitors to the festival,

for starters try this
there are more on flickr if you just search for Shrewsbury Folk Festival.

You should easily find pictures of almost all the acts up there - expect there to be lots of Rushad from Crooked Still on your journey for pictures!

If you have a gallery of shots from this years festival please leave a link in the comments, thanks.

It's over!

Well, we all hope you had a great festival and travelled home safely.

From an organisers point of view things went pretty smoothly, which is in no small part thanks to the stewards and you, the festival attendees.

We'll post some photos later this week, but we'd love you to leave your comments on the blog letting us know what we did right and what we did wrong - we'll take these all into account as we plan for 2008.

For me Crooked Still were the best act of the weekend, closely followed by Bellowhead and Richard Shindell....let us know what worked for you!

It's here!!! (well it will be tomorrow)

The site has really come together today, with traders and caterers setting up for the weekend, the food tents, Panic Circus and other tents have shot up throughout the day.

The stages are complete and the light and sound rigs are all close to completion – we’re just about all set!

Didn’t have much time for photos today – but managed a quick look inside a deserted marquee 2 before the chairs go in.

marquee 2 - in the traditional Shrewsbury colours

Hope you all have a great festival!

Travelling to the site

Our website has full maps and directions to the festival site, but for those of you using satellite navigation the GPS co-ordinates are

N 52 43 020
W 002 45 742

These will get you to within 15 feet of the main entrance, but you will see the top of the main marquee well before this!

The postal address of the site is

Berwick Road
Shrewsbury
SY1 2PF

Travel well, and we’ll see you over the weekend.

We’ll post pictures from the festival has it happens, and a full report after the event.

Site set up

We’re well into the swing of things now, and all our main marquees are up - the main marquee is nothing short of spectacular.

If you head into Shrewsbury down the Mount then you can see it peeking up from a sea of trees as you drive into town, it looks like something out of a fairy tale!

Here are a couple of pictures from the site.

Marquee 1 at Shrewsbury

Marquee 2, almost complete

We now have more stewards on site who are setting up the tents that we use for artists reception, merchandise etc., and certainly by tomorrow we should have the majority of the site ready to go.

Initial site preparations

Preparations on the site began in earnest today, and the set up team are working hard at getting things ready for Friday.

We’ve had a really productive day and all three of our big marquees, the SP Holding Main Stage, Marquee 2 and the dance marquee are in various stages of completion.

Watching the preparatory work for the biggest marquee (see picture in “Lighting the Festival”) was interesting – the guy ropes are held in by 6 foot plus pegs that are driven into ground by a modified compact excavator with a pneumatic hammer.



The main poles for the biggest marquee are now up, and we feel all 3 marquees will be close to completion (if not completed) by tomorrow – we’ll post a set of photos of the whole site on Tuesday evening.

Activities in the town

Although we’ve moved from the Quarry to the West Midlands Showground, we’re committed to involving locals and bringing the festival into town.

There is a full programme of dancing in the Square and Quarry on Saturday and Sunday, plus there will be dancing at the Wheatsheaf, the Boathouse and St Alkmunds on these days

For those watching the dancing in the Square on Sat & Sun, we’ve teamed up with Innocent Smoothies who will be in there with their smoothie van to give away drinks to anyone watching!

We have music sessions programmed in at the Bird in Hand and Wheatsheaf over the weekend, but as is usually the case, impromptu session could happen anywhere.

Programmes

The programmes arrived yesterday morning, all those who ordered one at the time they purchased their tickets (that’s 667 of you) will see a copy dropping through their letterbox over the next day or two.

The programme is full colour and includes bios on every artist appearing at the festival, and the timetable covers every single event from main concerts, to workshops, through to all the events happening in the town over the weekend.

The programme will be available to purchase from the merchandise stand over the festival weekend (NOT at the ticket office as in previous years).

If you live in Shrewsbury or are arriving in town before the festival, then copies are available NOW at the main tourist information office in the Music Hall.

Sunshine and Shrewsbury

We've been watching the long term forecasts for months now (they've been all over the place!), but as the festival is now within touching distance the forecasts are beginning to settle down and we have a very good chance of getting an accurate prediction.

Here’s the current forecast, 8 days out from the festival – at this point everything looks set fair for warm days and mild nights…perfect!

Here’s the link for the updated forecast on Metcheck, which you can check anytime.

Lighting the festival

This year we’ve really put some thought and effort into how we light the festival; our aim being that when night falls the festival will have a real atmosphere.

The marquees and tents will all have festoon lighting, in a variety of colours, around the outside, and the main marquee (pictured below) will have rope lights on the guy ropes.

main marquee

The showground has a good number of established trees on site, and we will be adding lights to some of these which will create a beautiful effect as well as providing ambient evening/night lighting.

We’ve also changed the lighting inside the marquees - the stage lights in the main performance areas, as well as in the dance marquee have all changed and improved from previous years.

We've also installed permanent lighting to illuminate camping areas, these are on a timer and will switch off automatically in the early hours.

Ticket details

For those of you who’ve already bought tickets, here’s a quick reminder of how you pick up your wristbands on arrival.

Whether you booked online, over the phone or through the post, you will have had a receipt sent to you (either through the post or via email) – you need to bring this receipt with you to the festival where it will be exchanged at the ticket office for your wristbands. The wristbands are your ticket to the venues, and we will fit these to your wrists at the ticket office.

If you book after August 20th, then we’ll hold the receipt for you at the ticket office for collection along with your tickets.

We still have a small number of full 4 day tickets available, although these are selling out quickly – if you don’t have your tickets yet then please order as soon as possible!

Shrewsbury Town Centre

Although we've moved from the Quarry to the West Midlands Showground, we're still very close to the town centre.

The festival site is a very gentle and interesting 10-15 minute stroll along the river loop to the town centre

For those who prefer transport, we have free buses running from the site into the town centre every 15 minutes (Sat & Sun, 9am - 6pm), they will drop off and pick up at the railway station (very close to the castle), and The Square on High Street (next to the Old Market Hall, a beautiful building built in 1596). All you will need is your festival wristband for travel on these buses.

For a map of the town centre, try this town centre map

If your looking for somewhere to eat off the festival site try this food map

Final Site Layout and Map

We've now finalised the layout for the 2007 festival, and the programme has been sent to be printed - there are a couple of changes from the map we posted a month or two ago.

Hopefully this will give you an idea as to overall layout and for those of you camping on site, will give you an idea as to where you might like to pitch up!

click to view larger map

If you'd like to view a printable, high quality copy of the map you can download a copy here

Free Festival Stickers

We have two different types of stickers for this year’s festival – round instrument case stickers (10cm diameter) and rectangle window stickers (20cm x 5cm).

All artists performing at the festival will be given an instrument case sticker in their welcome pack, and we’ll have the window stickers on the merchandise stall at the festival.

Window Sticker

Instrument case sticker

As the festival is now here, we've removed the free sticker offer - the stickers will be available from the merchandise stall of the festival. Thanks to all who responded.

The festival site and the River Severn

In light of the flooding further down the River Severn, we feel it’s probably best to give you an update as to the current state of the river in Shrewsbury and the new festival site.

The river has been high (peaking at 3.4 meters at 5pm on 23rd July), BUT there has been no significant flooding in Shrewsbury, and we’ve avoided almost all of the water that has been causing problems further South.

Frankwell car park (in the centre of town near last years’ satellite camping area) was temporarily closed but has reopened this morning (24th July). One of the roads to the festival site was blocked due to water at the height of the flood, and an adjacent field to the showground flooded but the festival site escaped the water and is fine.

The water has dropped considerably since yesterday evening, and while still high, the water level is settling down.

Here are a couple of links to webcams from the town centre, these are both near the centre of town and focus on the river.

Welsh Bridge Webcam

Frankwell Quay Webcam

Festival t-shirts

Our festival shirts have arrived!

We chose Ethical Threads for our shirts, a company who source clothes from workplaces that meet international conventions on workers’ rights and who use Fairtrade certified organic cotton (from the Vasudah farming project in Madhya Pradesh, India)

The quality and finish on the shirts is superb and we have a range of styles and colours to choose from – these are straight out of the boxes, apologies for any creases!

Blue Small logo shirt

Brown Small Logo Shirt

Black Large Logo Shirt

Green M*A*S*H shirt (also available in fitted ladies sizes)

Childrens' shirt (no backprint)

2007 Folk Festival Schools Project

We’ve just completed our school project for 2007, we were in Oxon CofE Primary School between June 26th – 29th, and had a hugely successful and rewarding time with the pupils and staff from Oxon.

We had Emily, Sophy and Ian from 422 providing music and dance workshops to reception and years 1,2,3 and 5; and had Dave Hunt and Steve Rowley from Sunshine Arts working with years 4 and 6 on a Mummers play and various Caribbean elements including a tuk band, landship dance and playground games.

Friday afternoon saw performances from every school year - the weather held, parents were invited and every year put on a performance that was as memorable as it was enjoyable.

We started with some songs and playground games from Barbados which was followed by a Landship Dance (a performance which symbolizes and reflects the passage of ships through rough seas whilst having a dig at the British Navy!), which was in turn followed by a Tuk Band (authentic Caribbean band of two drums, penny whistle and bells).

Year 6 then performed the Oxon Mummers Play – a traditional Shropshire Mummers play that was adapted and now stands as a distinct play. Some great performances, lines (and costumes!) made the play a real hit with the audience.

422 then performed with the groups they had worked with over the week – we had (and needed) a sound engineer who provided PA for the audience of around 500 adults and children.

Emily, Sophy and Ian played and directed a number of excellent elements including social dances from years 5 & 3 (Belgian Clapping Dance, Virginia Reel, Circassian Circle), we had a clog dance from Yr 5, and we finished with everybody singing ‘Apples and Bananas’.

There were two highlights of 422s set, reception and yr 1 danced ‘Jump Jim Joe’ a simple social dance that grows exponentially with every verse, by the 5th verse the whole school was dancing with children and staff all together on the playground.

It was Year 2 who stole the show, with what can only be described as a spirited rendition of The Rattlin’ Bog – there’s no doubt that every single yr 2 pupil had a great time performing the song and it’s many verses!

The staff, pupils, musicians and organisers all had a fun and rewarding time over the week – as a festival we have committed to providing instruments to the school and a number of family tickets to the pupils and their parents, and we intend to continue our work in the future.

Our 2007 school project was funded by Awards for All (National Lottery), and we thank them for recognising the importance of the project and backing our bid.

Thank you to Dave, Steve, Emily, Sophy and Ian, the staff at Oxon for embracing the project and most of all the children who threw themselves into the week and made it memorable for all. Thanks!

Tunebook

The tunebook will be used as a basis for two improvers’ sessions.

This is an opportunity for those who play instruments and want to get involved in sessions, but who find it all a little too daunting or who just want to brush up their skills and improve confidence.

We will have experienced musicians on hand playing fiddle, mandolin, box & guitar, and they will help everybody who needs it.
You may learn as many or as few of the tunes from the Tunebook as you like, and the session leaders will be there to keep everything going and running smoothly; they’ll also answer any questions and help you with any musical queries in the sessions.

There will be one session in The Big Shed on Saturday, and one on Sunday in the bar area (which is huge) – we’ll have more details closer to the festival.

This is a first for Shrewsbury and we’re really excited – it’s an opportunity to get involved in a group session without any fear or worries. The leaders are there to help out and ensure you get the most out of session and will help people of every ability.

In the meantime, have a look at the tunebook here, and start practising!

Maps for the 2007 site

We’ve been putting the final touches to the layout of the festival over the past month or so and have spent time on site working out the final details – everything is coming together well and the transition to this new site has been smooth and trouble free.

Below are two maps to give you an idea as to how we're going to lay the festival out, we confident this is the final layout, although a map reflecting any changes will be printed in the festival programme.

This is the festival layout as it stands, along with a key showing
the positioning the marquees, camping areas etc.

click image for larger view

An aerial shot to give you an idea of the site and the internal roadways etc click image for larger view

Children’s and Youth’s Projects

We’re just putting the finishing touches to our programming for our younger audience – here are some of the details in advance of the official announcement.

Shrewsbury Folk Festival Schools Project
We’re going to spend a week in late June in a local primary school with members of 422 and Sunshine Arts.
422 will be providing instrumental, vocal and dance workshops to all classes – the details will be finalised on Monday but there will be a band performance, ceilidhs and clog dancing, a chance for pupils to play various instruments, a final group ceilidh, and for some of the older group an introduction to rapper sword dancing.
Sunshine Arts will work with the older pupils on a Mum & Tuk’ play which fuses traditional Caribbean Tuk dance and English Mummers plays; there are also opportunities for Caribbean clapping games and percussion workshops. This is an exciting and significant project which we’ll formally announce next week, with full details of the school and a timetable of events.

Youth’s workshops
'The Big Shed' (see post below) will host some superb workshops for youths, amongst those that we’ve already scheduled are a Longsword Dance workshop with Sue Coe and Ryburn Longsword, a Samba percussion workshop with Sam Pirt, and vocal harmony workshops with Matt Price and Stream of Sound

Family Ceilidh
On Sunday afternoon the dance tent will host a family ceilidh with 422.

We’ll officially announce full details of these next week on both the website and blog – thoughts and ideas are very welcome, please feel free to leave a comment on the blog, we read them all!

Youth programme ‘The Big Shed’

Our move to the West Midlands Showground means that we have more room and more opportunities for distinct programming; as a result of this we’re giving young people ‘The Big Shed’, a venue aimed at those aged from 12-25.

‘The Big Shed’ will have workshops from many of the artists performing at the festival – for example there will be individual workshops in songwriting, vocal harmony, melodeon, percussion and Longsword.

There will also be an ‘improvers’ instrumental workshop, aimed at those looking to gain confidence in playing in sessions.

After dark ‘The Big Shed’ will become a dance house or chill out zone exclusively for young people with a folk-DJ mixing both tunes and songs.

Line-up amendments

Sadly, due to unforeseen circumstances we’ve had to make a couple of small alterations to the line-up.

Patrick Street were due to play on Monday afternoon, but are sadly unable to make the festival – we’re currently looking at filling the slot and expect to announce an excellent new act over the next few days.

Bob Harris was scheduled to MC for a few hours on Sunday night but is now unable to be with us on that evening.

We’re all really disappointed that neither Patrick Street nor Bob will be at the 2007 festival, but they will obviously be on our lists for booking in 2008. Please accept our apologies for any disappointment.

We’ll announce new bookings on the blog and festival website as soon as we have them confirmed.

2007 Posters

Ltd Edition, numbered Hatch Show Print Posters

Formed in 1879, Hatch Show Print is one of the oldest letter press printers in America; based in Nashville they have a uniquely identifiable art style, and an unrivalled history in producing posters for country music’s biggest names as well as many multi-national and local companies.

The posters are all hand produced using letters and imagery from their own library – many of the letters, logos and images have been used repeatedly over many decades.

Using the same printing techniques over many years has kept an authentic turn of the century feel to their work – every machine is hand operated and every single poster hand made. No corners are cut and the results are stunning pieces of poster art.

Our posters are printed on uncoated 80lb cover, cream coloured with flecks that look like recycled paper – it’s perfect for framing.

We opted for a three colour design, which means each poster has been individually passed through a press three times (once for each colour); it’s a precise and time consuming process but the results are stunning and distinct from any other printing process (click the image for a much more detailed view).

As each poster is hand made, there are slight differences to every single poster – we had a limited print run of 200 posters and each one is individually numbered.

Dimensions (W x H)32.5cm x 58cm (12.8” x 22.8”)

We’re selling the posters prior to the festival as this will enable to you keep them in the best possible condition (rather than trying to keep one for 4 days over the festival weekend!). If there are any remaining posters then these will be available at the festival merchandise stall.

All orders will be shipped in strong postal tubes to keep the posters in perfect condition.

For more details or to purchase a poster, please visit Fish Records

Steward’s Party

Saturday April 14th was our steward’s party where all the stewards and those who hosted artists for the 2006 festival were invited to the main bar at the West Mid Showground – it’s a chance for us to say thanks to all those who help out and it’s a great way to meet up with friends both old and new.

Around 200 people from all over the country attended, with the vast majority arriving with tents, motorhomes or caravans and stopping overnight on-site (taking advantage of the superb weather!).

Thanks to all who made the effort, it was a great night with superb company and excellent food and drink; and it got our stay at the West Mid Showground off to a flying start! Thank you.

If you would like to steward at the festival there are full details on our website, if you're interested in hosting an artist then please contact us.

Planning the new site

Although we have already drawn up plans for how we intend to layout the main areas of the festival site (marquees, caterers, parking etc), we spent some time on the new festival site over the weekend looking at how to best utilise aspects of the Showground.


The picture above shows the showground and there are a good number of permanent buildings that we can use (just above the GRO of showground on the photo)– we’ll certainly use some as venues for sessions, workshops and ‘meet the artists’; we’re also currently considering a ‘youths only’ room, perhaps for workshops in the day and a chill out area for nights.

Much of this will fall into place as the festival draws nearer, but having so many buildings on site really opens up some exciting opportunities for us!

Early Bird Offer coming to an end....

The end of March means the end of our Early Bird ticket offer, which means 31st March is the last day we will sell tickets at the lowest price.

At present they’re £60 for an adult 4 day season ticket, and £30 for youths (age 11-17) but ticket prices rise on April 1st. There are full details on the festival website.

Last year the festival sold out; ticket sales are much stronger this year and we will definitely sell out again – it’s difficult to gauge exactly when we will sell out, but please don't leave it too late!

T-Shirts

Over the past few weeks we've been looking at the quality and range of shirts that we’ll offer at this year’s festival.

Although the designs are still to be finalised, we’ve joined forces with a Fairtrade manufacturer who are supplying a very high quality shirt made from 100% organic Fairtrade certified cotton and manufactured under ethical conditions that meet International Labour Organisation rules.

All t-shirts will be screen printed with high quality inks on both front and back, and there will be a range of designs available across at least 3 different colour choices.

After many comments last year we’re offering a choice of styles, with fitted ladies and children’s shirts available in addition to the standard fit t-shirt.

If you have any comments or have ideas as to what else we could/should have at the festival’s merchandise stall, please feel free to leave a comment on the blog or send an email!

Who’s on When?

Although we’ve not announced these dates officially on the main website yet, here are the edited highlights of who is on when……

Friday 24th
Jez Lowe and the Bad Pennies, Peatbog Faeries, Lisa Knapp, Les Barker, Pete Coe, Rod Picott

Saturday 25th
Show of Hands, Salsa Celtica, The Wailin’ Jennys, Chris Wood, Idiot & Friend (Keith Donnelly & Les Barker), Jez Lowe and the Bad Pennies (again!)

Sunday 26th
Bellowhead, Kate Rusby, Richard Shindell, Kathryn Tickell, Megson, Acoustic Strawbs, Kerfuffle, Marquee One MC Bob Harris

Monday 27th
Paul Brady, Crooked Still, Steve Tilston, The Wilsons, 422, Cockersdale, Keith Donnelly

New Marquees

All our venues will have a considerable increase in capacity over 2006, but we are keeping visitor numbers to a similar level as last year, making for a more comfortable festival for all.

We have a new main marquee (pictured) with a size increase from 1,700 seats to 2,200. Our second marquee will increase from 600 seats to 1,000 and the dance marquee will double in size.


Both concert marquees will be fully seated and the seating will go to the back of the venue.
For those who enjoy watching from outside the marquees we will take up some of the perimeter sides (weather permitting).

February Newsletter

Our February newsletter was sent out over the last few days, all those on our postal mailing list should be receiving their copies shortly.

If you’re not on our mailing list and would like a copy please visit our main website (here) to contact us and request a copy or sign up to our email newsletter.

Ticket prices are listed in the newsletter as well as being detailed on our website – we’re currently in the ‘early bird’ pricing band until April 1st, so tickets are at their lowest pricing level until this date!