10 things I loved about you, Folkstock:

This time last week Folkstock Festival had drawn to a close. This week, I think my blog is drawing to a close too. Aside from our wonderful videos, which will be posted up shortly (I’ll notify all my readers via my Folkstock twitter feed when they are completed and uploaded), I’d like to sign off with my 10 favourite things about Folkstock Festival. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed my ramblings and perhaps there’ll be a Folkstock Festival next year, that I’ll see you all at?!

1. The “game for a laugh” mentality.

This blog, although often carrying a serious message, is meant to be a bit of fun. I was invited along to blog from a young person’s perspective – and that’s the tone and style I’ve tried to keep. My blogging team were set the same task. Sound editor and interviewer Mikey D interviewed many of the artists, and came up with some unusual lines of questioning. I love that everyone was game for a laugh! (That bizzare conversation at the Morris dancing performance… that was us. sorry).

NOTE: You’ll also find the full results of Mikey’s ink blot tests on this sound bite too!

2. The tone.

I loved that Folkstock Festival didn’t take itself too seriously. I was a  little worried that it could become commercial – but it stayed true to its independent festival ethos the whole way through.

3. The banter.

I love it when artists are able to connect with their audience. And better still, when they are down to earth enough to be able to laugh at themselves, and invite us (as an audience) to laugh along with them. Lucy Ward got this spot on! She laughed  at herself, we laughed at her, she poked fun at us (mostly for not singing along loud enough), we played along (mostly by shouting her songs back at her). It worked.

 4. The dress sense.

Thanks to Espiritu, there was colourful hair galore at Folkstock Festival! And in fact, some people had got the memo and arrived with their own various funky hair colours ;). I loved that people just felt relaxed and comfortable all day! Most of all Nick (the Nick and The Sun Machine variety) who kitted himself out at The Grand Vintage Fair stall before going on stage!

Photo by Steve Beeston Photography

5. The sing-alongs.

There was plenty of this going on last Saturday (21st September). I must admit, one of my favourite sing-alongs was at the Turn Up The Sun stage – an enclosed space (like a circus tent) perfect for this kind of activity – and was with the band Ryewolf: they were just fun, and played the kind of traditional folk music that has you tapping your feet and clapping along.

Ryewolf

6. The freebies.

Some festivals give away wristbands and glow sticks. Folkstock gave away hair styles, updos, hair chalks, braids, head messages, foot massages, etc. Thanks to Espiritu Spa and Salon!

Espiritu salon and spa

7. The quirky extras.

There were so many good stalls at Folkstock Festival. I loved the CD stall (Talking Elephant), but my favourite quirk of the day was being able to enjoy a cuppa from a china tea cup and not a styrofoam cup! Thank you Time 4 Tea!

8. The food.

Pizza stand with a stone-fire oven. Crepe stall. I don’t think I need to even say anymore.

9. The family element.

Anyone who thinks kids wouldn’t enjoy a folk festival, or would end up getting bored – should have come to Folkstock.

10. The Memorable moments.

This pretty much includes the whole festival. Beginning to end. From arriving in the morning with no clue what to do (sorry to mention it Helen, but you missed me off of the production mailing list… 🙂 ) – luckily the cars either side of us in the car park included Lauren Deakin-davies (Helen’s daughter) on one side – who verified who I was, and a kind stranger on the other side, who by chance had printed off a spare production car parking pass, and gave it to us! (thank you so much, whoever you were!) to snapping my tent pole clean in half when putting my tent up in the evening (luckily, ever the problem-solver, I remembered I had some children’s plasters in my bag [I’m a hands-on Auntie] which I used to hold it together). It was the kind of fun, crazy, random, exciting day I’d hoped it would be!

Poor tent post

A couple more testimonials, from those taking part at Folkstock…

 “It’s been a good day; the audience are really chilled out which is cool. I’m happy to be involved and its been a good for a first year. I’ve done a lot of festivals this summer, and this one has got good set up – the sound doesn’t bleed between stages.” – Luke Jackson

“Folkstock’s on my front doorstep; I live just across the field, so I thought I’d come along!” – Anna Wendean

“It’s a great little stage (the Alt Stage) with its own audience. I really enjoyed it.” – Roxanne de Bastion

“We’ve been doing well – lots of people are buying things and one of the artists (Nick Stephenson) even bought one of our flags to wear on his stage! A European Union one of all things! He’s playing at 2.30 on the Alt Stage. I’m going to watch.” – The Grand Vintage Fair, St Albans

“It was really good; I really enjoyed it and it was a good stage to play on. I’m glad I bought the flag and hat from the stall (Grand Vintage Fair) too: they sent people our way!”- Nick Stephenson

“It’s been busy and we’ve just been grabbing passers-by and pulling them in – they’re loving it! I just can’t wait for the salon to open now!” –Epsiritu staff

Some of the people I chatted to.

One final review, from Altitude Arithmetic …

Altitude Arithmetic Reviews: ‘Folkstock’ (21st September 2013) 

Words: Priya Garg

Altitude Arithmetic was invited to the inaugural year of family-friendly trad-mod folk/roots fusion acoustic music festival, brainchild of Helen Meissner and home for a day to more than 70 artists from local to more nationally known performers and debut to veteran professionals at ‘Folkstock’.

Four dedicated stages were erected in the rugged leafy green fields of Aldenham Countrypark, just south of the pink streamer-covered visitor walkway and completed with everything from singing/ukelele workshops to various arts & crafts stalls, a selection of ciders, ales and the occasional wandering face-painted, stick-banging Morris Dancer….

READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE

Lucy Ward Sings …and Speaks

“Ey up!” – that is the greeting you will find on all of Lucy Ward’s blog posts on her website: lucywardsings.com.

I knew before Folkstock Festival began that I had my eye on Lucy Ward as a serious up and coming artist – and one we’re going to be seeing a lot more of in the future. Not only have I been seeing her pretty blue hair staring back from my press page since I started this blog in June (you’ll see her picture in the Observer is the first press cutting I uploaded) but in the lead up to our festival last weekend, Lucy made the awesome achievement of reaching number 28 in the Independent Music Charts – a feat I made sure to mention in my recent guest blog post for LiveLikeaVIP.com (If you missed it, you can see it here)…

When it came to the evening proceedings of Folkstock, I definitely had a mark next to her name on my programme – I wasn’t going to be missing the Derbyshire beauty. I wasn’t sure what it would mean for her set – and to us as an audience – when it was announced a few minutes before she was due on stage that she would be moving from the Main Stage to the Alt Stage; but I’m glad she did. I’m not entirely  sure of the reasoning behind the move, but I thought the Alt Stage had had a good vibe all day, and felt like it was its only little gig in the space it was given (its own little pocket of Folkstock) – so to have Lucy headline this stage was a fitting end to the energy we had seen here all day. And boy, did Lucy have energy!

I could tell from the reaction of the crowd that many of the audience members were fans and followers of Lucy – I don’t think there was a single song where people weren’t singing along unprompted! (Even the song about talking dirty  in Hawaiian was happily sung along to!). It was a great set to finish our Folkstock blogging work on (we decided to treat ourselves when we headed to the Main Stage, by keeping headliners Kris Drever and Eamonn Coyne as a work-free end to the day!), but not before letting Mikey D loose with some questions. Feel free to tweet Mikey with some REAL facts about Derby!

Reblog: How much musical talent can you cope with seeing in one day?

Wow!! Absolutely wow!! Folkstock was an amazing event! Unfortunately my lack of WiFi hotspots and less than impressive phone battery life (darn you iOS 7!) meant I didn’t really have the chance to blog on the go as I’d intended – but I managed a few tweets and some Instragram  posts too over the course of the day. I camped out at Aldenham Country Park last night (so I could make the most of some of the tasty ales on sale!), so after returning back from the wildness (humour me) – I’ve just about located, downloaded, rotated and uploaded (*breathe*) the majority of my photos, notes and video clips (we have many more to come though from our fantastic videographer), so you can expect lots of things to be appearing on this blog over the next week or so. In the mean time I found this fantastic blog post from Redwood Photography, so thought I’d share to whet your appetite a little…

Redwood Photography: Folkstock

Posted in: blog live music Sep 22 2013

How much musical talent can you cope with seeing in one day?

Folkstock was a bit mind-blowing….a diverse array of artists that started off really well and that just seemed to get better and better as the day went on.  Great festival….top job by organiser Helen Meissner and team.

Best acts?  Well the headliners were all good of course…The Willows, Lucy Ward, Boho Dancer….but other stand-out acts for me were Luke Jackson, Tom Moon, The Good The Bad and The Ginger, Ben Smith (blew me away), Flaming June (great stage energy), Fred’s House (been listening to their stuff for a while now), Alice (check out her single ‘Soldier’ on iTunes – seriously good!) and The Fallows (yeah I know I’m biased ‘cos they’re from Cov…but they’re still brilliant!).

READ THE REST OF THE BLOG POST HERE.

Thank you Redwood Photography!

It’s happening TOMORROW!

Phew! It’s a fantastic mix of excitement and fanatic busyness as we get ready for the last sleep before Folkstock Festival and Family Fete.  Volunteers and our festival director Helen have been working hard on site today to get everything ready, and if you click the image below you can see a large view map of the festival grounds at Aldenham Country Park:

If the earlier week’s poor weather has had you “um-ing” and “ah-ing” and you’ve only just decided that you are going to come along (well done, you’ve made the right decision!) there’s still time to buy your tickets online – simply visit the ticket sales page on our website. It’s also not too late to book a camping site if today’s weather has got you feeling more optimistic about that too; that can be done here.

I think seeing all the final details and preparations, such as the wrist bands that will be issued on the day – including the purple media ones that me and my little team of ; photographer: Saahil Dossani, Videographer: Eric Sawyer of Hertfordshire Students’ Union television and Sound Editor: Michael D’Souza will be wearing (if you see us on the day, come and say hi!), makes it all very real!

So, finally – keep an eye on this blog tomorrow – for live event coverage (sorry in advance for any typos or grammar/punctuation errors that slip through in all the madness – do keep me on my toes by letting me know) and in the week following; as further reviews and more pics, audio and vids will be posted! See you tomorrow!

Who’s playing at Folkstock?

I’ve been busy this week trying to think of all the ways to get information about our amazing Folkstock Festival (and the talented  line-up) across to our followers, and those in-betweenies that are thinking about buying a ticket but not yet sure…  (just remember, you always regret what you didn’t do, not what you did 😉 ).

I have previously introduced some of the main acts playing at Folkstock, but seeing as that was a while ago – and likely to have gotten lost in the mass of blog posts, I thought I’d bring you a quick and easy way to get to know some of our artists: via my Pinboard.

If you are – or know of – any Folkstock Festival artists that aren’t on the board, please help a blogger out and go ahead and add them – I’d love to see all of the acts’ websites on there by the weekend!

Follow the board through to Pinterest to see the larger range of our artists – all image will take you through to their websites.

The stage is set…

It’s getting so close, isn’t it? Only 6 days to go until Folkstock Festival. We’ve put together a full set list now of acts, times and stages (click the image below to view) – so once you have your tickets, you can get planning your weekend already.

Andy Shepherd of Shepherd Audio has kindly supplied us with this plan of how the area is going to look next Saturday, so you can get a good feel for the size and area its going to take place in. Excited doesn’t cover it!!

Folkstock merchandise, including the t’shirts (as modeled by festival director Helen Meissner and folkstock artist Amy Pettingill below), are now also available to buy via the website. Those of you who read the previous post about t’shirt designs may be pleased to see both designs are available to buy, with a list of various artists on the back.

If you can’t wait until  next weekend to have a listen to some of the artists that will be performing at Folkstock Festival – click here. Last Wednesday I headed to Nick Stephenson‘s Mid-Week  Music Open Mic night at The Boot, St Albans, to see Zoe Wren perform ahead of Folkstock – and if her set at The Boot was anything to go by, the Folkstock crowd are going to love her!

Folkstock Festival: Folky Fusion

As a general overview for those newbies that may have only just joined us Folkstockers recently… in just over a week Aldenham Country Park will be the venue for a prestigious high profile new festival, which you may have heard mentioned on BBC Radio Two on the Folk show recently, seen the full page ad in Music Week, read the guest blog on Tom Robinson’s Fresh on the Net site, or encountered in most of the Herts based newspapers, Hertfordshire Life, My Radlett News or any number of newspapers and specialist acoustic magazines across the region such as Unicorn Magazine and Folk London. The festival has had mentions on BBC Three Counties Radio, and had lots of exposure on local radio stations such as Radio Dacorum, Radio Verulam and Cambridge 105fm and has just announced that respected BBC Radio Presenter Sue Marchant ( who many of you will remember from when she used to do the evening show across our the Eastern Counties) acting as MC on the Main stage.

Folkstock on Sat 21st September, is being billed as a family friendly fete and festival and the ethos of the business behind it reflects good practice and academic evaluation of the ‘social gain’ the festival is going to provide for the community and everyone associated with it. In addition to these worthy aims, there is a charitable aspect, with the event supporting Cancer Research UK, a charity close to home for the organiser, who is a breast cancer survivor.
Helen Meissner MD of Folkstock Arts Foundation has set up her community interest company specifically to assist acoustic musicians with marketing and management support, at no cost, with no contract. There are 16 bands on the Folkstock Arts Foundation programme and all of them, in addition to 60 others, many from our area, are performing across the four stages on Saturday 21st September at Aldenham Country Park, Elstree.

But in addition to the music, there will be a number of other activities for everyone to get involved with, such as ukulele, slide guitar and song writing workshops, arts and crafts to take part in, locally brewed beer and artisan cooking, a vintage tea tent with delicious cakes, morris dancing from local side Wicket Brood, sessions in the bar to join in with, arts and vintage stalls to browse, free massages and beauty treatments from new salon Espiritu, jewellery stalls, tasty festival feast food, local award winning beer from Red Squirrel, an organised amplified busking spot ( so bring your guitar), a village green area which hopes to have the local Under 10 yr old ceilidh group performing, a chocolate fountain, glitter tattooists, a charcoal sketcher who will capture you on paper if you so desire. I could go on, each day new attractions are being added to the line up.” says Helen.

Festival Director Helen

This new event promises to unite families and musicians in a joyous fusion of music and dance, arts and crafts, gourmet cooking and real ales. 

Artists include award winning musicians such as  Lucy Ward, Kris Drever and Eamonn Coyne, Reg Meuross, Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker,The Willows, Fred’s House, Luke Jackson and Said the Maiden, The Willows, Flaming June, Boho Dancer, Marina Florance and Gus MacGregor.

Tickets are available for advance purchase – Click here for more details

 

 

Espiritu Salon & Spa to launch at Folkstock Festival

Festivals are usually associated with ‘roughing it up’ a bit: think mud, camping and – if you’re anything like me – wild banshee hair. But Folkstock Festival is all about challenging conventions, and blogger ‘Mummywhisperer‘ is lending a helping hand, by offering a range of beauty treatments on the day of the festival and family fete.

On her own blog, she says:

Never been to a Folk Festival? Nows the time to try it

By MummyWhisperer, on September 9th, 2013

To finish off the summer you can go to Folk Stock on Sat Sept 21st at Aldenham Country Park.  Doors open at 10.30 and it finishes at 11.30pm.  Folkstock is slightly different in that it is not just folk, but also acoustic artists, and the amount of choice is going to be phenomenal.

Check out their wicked jingle (I KNOW how cool is it that they have a jingle!) .. <listen here>

Plus, there is a big bonus in that we will be launching Espiritu, our new Salon and Spa there – so you can come and get free hair consults, hair colours in your hair (using hair chalks), braids, reflexology or indian head massage.  Come on over and we’ll give you a bit of a pamper and pep up!

Read more by clicking here.

I personally can’t wait to try out hair chalks – I’ve been curious about having these done for ages! – And the Indian head massage sounds pretty good too.

ESPIRITU SAYS:

We are so excited at Espiritu to be pre-launching ourselves at Folkstock Festival on Sept 21st, as we have so much in common with the ethos behind this wonderful festival.

Our Salon is about giving you that moment in time to bring you back to ‘you‘ in the midst of our hectic world.  Live music is wonderful for this, but there is something extra special about Folk and Acoustic music, as it is about our roots and something stronger than just the ever changing and moving modern world.

We love to embrace the old style glamour of simpler times, whilst enjoying modern miracles like iPods and gell nails, it is this fusion that we are looking forward to at Folkstock.  So come along to our tent (you wont be able to miss it with our big flag) and enjoy one of our treats for you:

 

• Braids in your hair,
• Fun Colours (from hair chalks)
• Hair Beads for children
• Free Consultations
• Reflexology (feet or hands) taster sessions
• Indian Head Massage taster sessions
• Hand massages
• Balloons

 

 

And remember to pick up a 25% off voucher for your first visit to our salon!

If you have kids, then folk festivals are the perfect family friendly way to introduce them to live music, and we too think that families are important, which is why we have created ‘Mummy Mondays’ at the salon to support you mums.  Check out my tips about festivals over on the MummyWhispererBlog.

Community is important to us; we will be supporting local businesses, authors, musicians and charities at Espiritu and making sure that the products and services that we offer are ethical and environmentally friendly.  Folkstock is actually a charity event being organised by the Folkstock Arts Foundation who among other things supports folk and acoustic musicians.

Check out some of the lovely line up here on sound cloud or listen to the lovely Tamsin Rosewell’s delicious radio show about folkstock.Hope to see lots of you there!

Linda Wilks on Warming up for the Folkstock Festival

Hertford Corn Exchange, Sept 6th

On Friday 6th September, just over 2 weeks away from Folkstock Acoustic Festival and Family Fete, the Folkstock Arts Foundation held a warm-up event – as a practice-run for the big gig! As well as giving out (for FREE) these amazing cupcakes, made by Jan’s Cakes, the event attracted a great crowd – including one of the ‘community gain’ researchers, using Folkstock as a case study.

RESEARCH PARTNER LINDA WILKS WRITES:

What a lovely atmosphere at the Folkstock Festival warm-up event held at the Hertford Corn Exchange last Friday. It was great to be able to see some of the acts which will also be on at the festival on the 21^st. All of the performances were excellent and I came away with a Said the Maiden CD which I’ve been enjoying listening to since then – the fiddle playing was a major draw for me and I love the quirky songs and harmonised vocals.

I also took the chance to persuade lots of people to fill in a questionnaire about their Folkstock experiences so far – many thanks to those of you who were kind enough to do this on the night (and also to the online people). Ever since Helen called in at the Uni of Herts, where I used to work, and told us about the festival she was setting up, I’ve been keeping in touch with developments. I’ve carried out research at festivals and gigs before, so I know how rich and interesting they can be as places to do research. I was also really keen to work with Helen to collect data which will help her to review how Folkstock is going. I’ll be writing up the findings for Helen with my consultancy hat on, as well as putting together an article for an academic journal with my researcher hat on, too.

The questionnaire survey is exploring the messages which people are receiving about Folkstock. It’s asking things like how people heard about it, and also trying to find out whether people are getting the impression that the Folkstock ethos is being achieved. There’s space for people to add extra comments too and a couple of those stood out to me: “I think this is going to be an amazing event and the start of something very special”, and “So far all the Folkstock events have been really enjoyable. I’m looking forward to the main event!”. The survey is also running online – there’s been a link from the Folkstock Facebook page for the last few days. If you have a connection to Folkstock and you’d like to fill in a questionnaire yourself, we’d be really pleased to hear from you. You can click this link to fill it in https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Folkstock_survey – it’s all anonymous. We’ll also be giving out the questionnaires at the festival too. The more feedback we can get the better!

Finally, a comment from one of the online questionnaires is a nice one to finish with, and after Friday’s gig I can see why someone put this: “Such a huge line up of talented musicians of all ages. I do not think the like will ever be repeated as I am sure some of these acts will be mainstream very soon.”

Enjoy the festival – not long now!

Dr. Linda Wilks

Research Partner, Verlamion Cultural Impact Analysis and Visiting Research Fellow, The Open University

You can find some of my other research here (including my 300-page PhD thesis in case you’re having a sleepless night!) http://independent.academia.edu/LindaWilks

 

‘Mummysphere’ Folkstock supporter has a family ticket up for grabs

Folkstock Acoustic Festival has evolved from its first days of planning. It has evolved to include many more stalls, stages and events than we had first imagined – and as a result has become billed as a ‘family fete’ as much as it is a festival.

In support of how ‘family friendly’ the folk and acoustic festival is, ‘themummysphere’ blog has opened a competition to win tickets for four…

Folkstock 2013 Giveaway

31 August 2013 by Kirsty Hornblow 3 Comments

Folkstock Acoustic Festival is a family friendly music festival in the beautiful surroundings of Aldenham Country Park in Hertfordshire taking place on Saturday 21st September 2013.  The fun begins at 10.30am and the music starts at 11am, carrying on until 11.30pm. As well as two main stages and two tents packed full of award winning national and local musicians and bands there will be lots to see and do including face painting, ukulele workshops and a village fete. You can hear listen to the line-up here.

I have one family ticket (4 people, minimum 1 adult) to Folkstock Acoustic Festival 2013 to give away.  If you would like to be in with the chance of winning simply answer this question in the comments below…

CHECK OUT THEMUMMYSPHERE TO VIEW THE QUESTION AND ENTER THE COMPETITION! Best of luck!