The Festival may be over, but it feels like things are just beginning…
As you probably know, the Folkstock Arts Foundation community interest company was set up in February of this year, and we are delighted to have won a place in the finals for two Hertfordshire Business Awards: for Hertfordshire Business in Community Award and Business Person of the Year (for our Festival Director Helen Meissner).
The next stage for the 5 finalists in each category, is to be visited by the judges and the announcements are made at the Knebworth Barns ceremony on 28th November. Other Herts based finalists include Harriet Kelsall Jewellery from Weston, who is a highly feted entrepreneur who co incidentally has been a great supporter and sponsor of Folkstock Arts Foundation musicians!
A week later, on December 2nd, the UK festival awards announce their winners in London’s prestigious Round House, which until the end of October also incorporates a public vote. We are thrilled to be included in the nominations for 5 awards, including Best New, Best Small, Best Grassroots, Best Toilets and Best Family festival! Other Herts based festivals are also nominated for various awards, or can be voted for by the public if you go to the Festival Awards website and all of these listed had Folkstock artists performing or indeed whole stages managed and curated by the foundation for acoustic musicians – they are Standon Calling, Wilkestock, Balstock and Folk by the Oak.
You can vote until the 1st November if you feel so inclined, for any festival you have enjoyed. If they are not nominated, you can suggest them for ‘Best of the Rest’. To vote click here.
Message from the Festival Director:
“We are thrilled that the awards nominations have given us another chance to promote the foundation which will increase the profile of the musicians who are associated us. Many Herts based musicians were included in the 16 who have been on our mentoring, marketing and masterclass programme this year and they have performed at a number of events put on by the foundation this year. However, we are not sitting on our laurels, in fact, regardless of the outcome that getting this far in these lovely awards has afforded us, we are in a very exciting developmental time.
Following on from Folkstock Festival just over a month ago, we are broadening the existing support for acoustic musicians to provide more opportunities for them to make a living from music. Introducing Folkstock Represents and Folkstock Records”.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that Folkstock is all about providing a platform of opportunity. Of course the Folkstock Foundation, which the festival was born out of, was established to support new and emerging acoustic, folk and roots musicians and help to bridge the gap between artists and the harsh business and marketing world – which is the ethos of the entire event – and I’ve written before about the fact that the festival was used to launch local business: Espiritu, but there’s an underlying current that runs a bit deeper than that, in my view.
Whether realising the extent of this or not, Folkstock has allowed me as an individual to explore some of the links between professionalism; breaking into a career path, and the way that a combination of student media and local events can help one to realise their potential.
Earlier in the year Festival Director Helen Meissner approached me, as the then Editor of Hertfordshire Students’ Union magazine; BlueMoon, to write an article about Folkstock Foundation, the festival, and its lead-up events. I was able to include the piece in my ‘Talent Issue‘, which I’d hoped would provide exposure to the many positive things that the students at the University of Hertfordshire are doing; the research taking place, the awards won, and also advice from graduate peers and a spotlight on ways and places to showcase said talents (cue the article about Folkstock). I’d also hoped that my team of writers, photographers and designers responsible for creating our magazine would gain some recognition too.
The article featured in BlueMoon
It was a ploy that worked well. After sending out a copy to Helen (as I did with all the interviewees and contributors external to the university) she researched me and found I’d blogged for the St Albans Film Festival for its debut year. All of a sudden I was agreeing to become the official blogger of Folkstock Festival (bringing a student’s eye view to the proceedings) and my associate editor; Kealie Mardell (an up and coming music journo) was given opportunity to interview the festival team and artists for the UniVerse Newspaper.
Better still, unbeknownst to me, the model of one of our featured photos was being signed up to perform at her first festival.
Natalie Denise, as featured in BlueMoon Magazine
I have to give credit to photographer Saahil Dossani of S.H Photographic for his stunning photo of singer/songwriter Natalie Denise (which incidentally won a Student Recognition Award for Student Media’s Best Photo). This captured Helen’s eye and with a bit more research, she had brought Natalie on-board (I can’t stress enough how appreciated it is when professionals take the time to follow up on individuals!).
Natalie did a great job on the Folkstock Presents… Stage on Saturday. You’d have never known that this was her first festival performance; her sweet voice and moving lyrics of her song dedicated to her nan (Little Hand) – which she is using to fundraise for the Alzheimers Society – had the audience captivated. I hope this leads to good things for her. Find out more about her charity single here.
Never one to miss a trick, you may have read already that I took a small team with me to help with coverage of last Saturday’s festival. There was two reasons for this: the first hope was that between the three of us, we would be able to get some form of coverage of as many artists as possible; whether it be photography, video, audio interview, a tweet, or simply notes on my page – and secondly, because I knew it would give an opportunity for my fellow UH students to put their skills into practice in a real, live event environment.
Eric Sawyer, our videographer for the day, is an enthusiast for all things media, and is set to take on the role of head of Hertfordshire Students’ Union television outlet this academic year. He has filmed many of the acts at the festival and is currently completing post production work and editing footage ready uploading on this blog. All of which will be making its way to our video page.
Audio editor and interviewer Michael D’Souza was the Assistant Station Manager for Crush Radio last year. I invited him along after listening to his repertoire of interviews on SoundCloud and remembering that he was looking to explore radio further and make industry contacts. There came a brilliant moment when I was covering the Main stage when BBC Cambridgeshire’s Sue Marchant, who was host for that stage, commented before Pauline Alexander & Edwin Gallagher’s set that radio’s don’t do enough to support these kinds of events.
Ever the one to challenge things, I raced to my blogging team and suggested Mikey D carry out an impromptu interview with BBC’s Sue Marchant addressing that issue. Listen to the result of that conversation below:
So all in all, students and community do go hand-in-hand – and when a local organisation and event gives us the opportunity to step-up, I think we media-folk can produce great results in promoting local talent, and in turn can help promote our own talents. I think we all gained something from the festival on Saturday; whether it be exposure for the artists or exposure as journalists, bloggers and media producers.
Exposure and opportunity: that to me is the lasting impact of Folkstock Festival.
Stay tuned for my last few summary posts coming up over the weekend and lots of videos too!
It really is great to see so many positive responses and warm words of thanks in response to Folkstock Festival. If you went to the festival, you might be interested to know that we are collecting feedback for Folkstock Arts Foundation to assess the social benefits of music festivals and would really appreciate a few mins to complete this easy to do survey. Click here to access it.
I’ll leave you with a few more words of reflection from the wonderful FRESH ON THE NET blog…
by Johnno Casson
I was lucky enough to attend (& play) the inaugural Folkstock Festival this past weekend & what a lovely festival it was too.
A new boutique festival has no right to be this friendly,this welcoming & this well organised has it? Well Folkstock most certainly was.Stages were managed with military precision yet with a warm & personal touch that was charming.
Set in the beautiful grounds of Alderham Country Park they had 4 stages of music & an assortment of homespun stalls & activities for everyone.
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…
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!).
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!
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.
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!
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.
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 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…
Folkstock Managing Director Helen Meissner spent the weekend at Wilkestock, taking amazing photos of the performances, as usual – which I’ve put a sample of here. It looks like it was a blast!
Garry Smith
The Tritones
The Folk
Nick and The Sun Machine
Zoe Phillips
A little bird also told me that Simon Hadwin (the drummer of Nick and the Sun Machine, whom I meet at the Marketing Matters event) impressed the crowds with an impromptu spot on the acoustic stage to fill in for an artist who had to cancel – nice one!
I, on the other hand, headed over to Trestle Arts Base, to see KARA’s folk performances with a Russian twist. Daria Kulesh was the first Folkstock act I ever encountered, having met her at the St Albans Film Festival, so I definitely wanted to see her joined by her band on stage.
This was my first experience of hearing a hammered dulcimer instrument being played, and it certainly added another dimension to KARA’s musical sound.
Four bands played in total last night: KARA, Starseedz, Broken Boat and The Neverists. It was great to see the space at the arts base being used so well, and lots of people enjoying the local talent that Herts seems so full of. The Neverists themselves summed it up with:
“The show we played last night was incredible, I have never felt a reaction from an audience like last night, people we’re dancing to our songs, we played the longest set we have ever played and really got to mix it up, with Jimmi leaving the drums to play harmonica.”
KARA
Broken Boat
I love finding new music, and hearing Broken Boat for the first time last night was a real treat. I’m looking forward to seeing the performances of other Folkstock artists at Trestle in the coming months, and discovering other local bands. Hopefully some of these guys will be heading along to Folkstock Festival in 3 weeks time, to give us a few impromptu performances at the ‘on the day sign up’ slots?!
by Johnno Casson
Folkstock Festival: Musical Notes 