Online Tickets on sale now!

On-line tickets went on sale earlier today from the festival website, this year online ticket sales are available with no booking fee!

This is obviously the quickest and cheapest way to order tickets, and up until April 1st our tickets are available at the special early bird rate.

We've also just sent out newsletter off to the printers today, some of you will receive these in the post, and in the next week it will be available on the main website.

If you can't wait,

there's a PDF of the colour segments here

the information insert is here

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Shrewsbury 2008

The above link is to youtube, but we have a high quality version on the main festival website here

John Wesley Harding, Shrewsbury 2008

The above link is to youtube, but we have a high quality version on the main festival website here

New Rope String Band, Shrewsbury 2008

The above link is to youtube, but we have a high quality version on the main festival website here

Lunasa, Shrewsbury 2008

The above link is to youtube, but we have a high quality version on the main festival website here

2009 Line-up Announced

We launched our new 2009 website (here), and have announced most of the line-up for the two main marquees.

We still have a couple of acts to confirm for the big concerts, and obviously a host of programming for the smaller venues - we'll announce these in the coming weeks.

In no particular order, the line-up for 2009 includes

The Proclaimers
Seth Lakeman  
Eric Bibb  
The Dhol Foundation
Show of Hands
Hoven Droven
Spooky Men's Chorale  
Patrick Street
Chris Wood
Ollabelle
Lau
Jez Lowe
Megson
Karine Polwart
Chris Smither
Breabach
Corinne West
Mark Erelli
Rachael McShane
Emily Smith Band
Krista Detor
The Dust Poets
Duncan McFarlane Band
The Wilsons
Fran McGillivray & Mike Burke

Online tickets will be on sale around the middle of January, but they're on sale now for telephone orders on 01746 768813

Darwin Song Project

You may have seen the half page teaser for Darwin in the programme for the 2008 festival…..we’re now close enough to the event to flesh out the detail a little.

The website for the Darwin Song Project is here, with bios for artists and more details on the project.

The headline details are

Chris Wood, Karine Polwart, Jez Lowe, Stu Hanna, Mark Erelli, Emily Smith, Krista Detor and Rachael McShane will all take part in a songwriting retreat for 7 days to write songs that have a relevance and resonance to Charles Darwin.

There will be a premiere of the songs at the new Theatre Severn on March 19th, and all the artists will get together again at the festival in August for a further performance.

BBC Radio 4 are involved in the project and will broadcast a documentary on the week in the house and look at how the songs developed from their earliest drafts up to the final performance.

Tickets for the Theatre Severn show are on sale now – there’s only a very limited number of seats available, so if you’d like to attend then please order them early (direct from the theatre here)

Bellowhead, Shrewsbury 2008

The above link is to youtube, but we have a high quality version on the main festival website here

The Duhks, Shrewsbury 2008

The above link is to youtube, but we have a high quality version on the main festival website here

The Demon Barber Roadshow. Shrewsbury 2008

The above link is to youtube, but we have a high quality version on the main festival website here

Oysterband, Shrewsbury 2008

The above link is to youtube, but we have a high quality version on the main festival website here

Eilen Jewell Band, Shrewsbury 2008

The above link is to youtube, but we have a high quality version on the main festival website here

The Doonans, Shrewsbury 2008

The above link is to youtube, but we have a high quality version on the main festival website here

Shrewsbury Folk Festival and the Theatre Severn

The festival is proud to announce a partnership with new Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury.

The theatre opens in early 2009, and the festival is heavily involved in the folk and acoustic programming for the venue.

Over the course of the year the festival will co-promote shows with the theatre under the banner of “Shrewsbury Folk Events”.

The first three concerts are

March 19th 2009 Darwin Song Project
April 16th Show of Hands (with Megson as support)
May 22nd Seth Lakeman (a very rare show in a seated venue)

We’ll announce more details on each show next week, but tickets are on sale now here where you can check availability of seats.

Hope House. Thank you.

Thanks to the generosity of our festival goers, we raised thousands of pounds at this year's event to fund music therapy for children with life limiting illnesses who attend the Hope House Hospice in Shropshire.

As those of you who came to the West Mid showground on Sunday will know, volunteers from the hospice were outside the two marquees after the afternoon concerts collecting with buckets - and boy, did you fill them! Painstaking counting revealed a massive £1,054 was raised via the collection and a further £130 from the collecting tins dotted around the site over the weekend.

When we made our fundraising commitment to Hope House we agreed to donate a proportion of our tickets sales - we are still totalling up, but we already know it will be in excess of £3,000!

Some of us committee members were lucky enough to get the chance to visit Hope House and see the work it does and we have no doubt that every penny you donated will make a real difference.

Many of the children at Hope House have limited speech, learning difficulties or a severe disability and music is a great outlet for them. It costs around £8,000 - all of which has to come from the £3.5 million the charity has to raise each year - and thanks to our wonderful visitors we can now fund over half the cost.

So thank you from everyone at Shrewsbury Folk Festival and at Hope House - we'll fill you in on the final total as soon as we know it!

Pictures and Videos

We now have a selection of pictures available on the main festival website here

A quick look at flickr reveals hundreds of pictures from this years’ festival, and youtube has performances from almost everybody, you can find almost the entire Bellowhead set on there.

If you have pictures or videos of the festival online, then thank you very much, we (and we imagine people who attended the festival) love searching for them during idle moments…if you do have any online then please post a comment with a link below so we can all take a peek!

Of the official pictures (around 4000) taken by Sabine of Virtual Shropshire, I’ve chosen my favourites from each day - not necessarily the best pictures, but shots that capture the atmosphere of the festival.



In order, from top to bottom
Friday Breabach open the festival in Marquee 2
Saturday bellydancing in the dance tent
Sunday The Duhks finishing their excellent village stage concert
Monday Bellowhead enjoying a mid-song dance
click any image for a larger view

It's over!!!

If you came to the festival, we hope you had a great time and that your journey home was safe.

We're sorting through photos and videos, it will take a few days but we'll post links up when we have them all arranged.

In the meantime, please leave comments here to let us know what you enjoyed, what the highlights were and where you think we can improve - we take everything on board and this helps us shape the festival for next year

For me, The Duhks village stage set, Nancy Kerr & James Fagan's harmony workshop, and the Demon Barber Roadshows concert with the children from Oxon were my three favourite moments.............over to you.

It's here

The caterers and traders started setting up last night, and barring a couple of stagglers they're all here.

The site set up is almost complete - the main stage is looking fantastic and has some new stage lights this year (wait 'til you see them!), and the rest of the site has all come together really well.

It rained yesterday, and there's a little mud around the site - some of this will go, but obviously in the high traffic areas there's a chance it might hang around. We're dealing with it with matting and wood chippings, and the forecast is good for the weekend, so hopefully it won't be too much of a problem.

Doors open at 10am - see you sometime over the weekend. Hope you all have a great festival!

Marquees

Almost all the marquees are up, and tomorrow the stages should all be in place – in comparison to last year we’re a little further forward in the set-up.

There are a couple of other changes of note, 'The Big Shed' (the youth venue), is now a large tent with a wooden floor and although it's only moved a little, it's in a much nicer spot.

Our open-mic tent (Sabrina) has also moved into a more prominent position, and will encourage more people to stop and listen.

The main bar is now in a much larger marquee, and the Dr Sunshine children's tent is now a white marquee (rather than the multi-coloured marquee from last year, that made painting and generally working with colours an 'interesting' experience!)

Here are a few shots from around the site.

Artists' Reception

Thought you might like a little insight into what goes into the artists’ reception area, here are some of the numbers that make up some of hospitality we provide for artists at the festival....

3.6kg Ground Fresh Coffee (to make 96 litres)
400 assorted muffins
400 tea bags
60 herbal tea bags
240 cans of Coke
48 bottles of wine
9kg of sweets (3 x 3kg bags of pink and blue sweets from Liquorice Allsorts, Jelly babies and sugared almonds)
12 litres of orange juice
1000 milk stix
1000 sugar bags
1500 bio-compostable coffee cups
1500 wooden stirring sticks

and that doesn’t include artists’ riders!