This year the Woodford Folk Festival is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Tickets to the iconic event are on sale now at www.woodfordfolkfestival.com with a 35% discount for early birds.
The festival runs from Dec 27 – Jan 1.
Festival Director Bill Hauritz was there from the beginning, having founded what is now Australia’s largest gathering of artists and musicians, three decades ago, “We’re using our 30th not to reflect but to look forward. It’s an opportunity to hit the refresh button and create some real surprises,” he said.
“Turning thirty is mind-numbing for those of us still around after all that time, the older ones among us are delighted with the young age of the volunteers, organisers and staff. It produces a seriously youthful energy. Enthusiasm for the festival from within has intensified not dissipated,” said Hauritz.
Festival Head of Programming Chloe Goodyear said excitement around the event is already building. “Interest in participation of the festival has never been greater. We’re already deep in writing this year’s programme and have had a lot of international enquiries which is exciting. The festival is getting very well-known around the world,” she said.
“What’s amazing is thousands of our patrons commit to the festival and buy tickets without knowing who is booked to perform,” said Goodyear. “They trust us and we’re pressured by that to deliver the best we can. Celebrating our 30th just adds to that – we must deliver.”
Festival Organisers have released detail of the 2014/15 festival demographic studies showing one third of attendees at the festival visited from interstate and 3.3 of every hundred had come from overseas. “Our overseas profile is building,” said General Manager Amanda Jackes. “We want to work with the Tourism Industry to try and take advantage of that profile.”
According to the study 71% of attendees had been before, “this is a very high repeat visitation rate – we have very loyal audiences which puts pressure on us to continually make changes, improvements and better ourselves each year. We’re so fortunate to have the patrons we have, they’re incredible and in our promotions to our campers we always say ‘you’ll love the neighbours’,” said Jackes.
Almost 60% of festival attendees either had university qualifications or were undergoing tertiary training. Further, the highest attending occupation category was professionals at 32%.
“These statistics are in line with previous studies and fly in the face of distant critics calling Woodford a hippy fest. It’s always been a long way from that but we do like the alternative tag and we also like the hippies. We want everyone to feel welcome at Woodford” Jackes said.
Festival tickets are on sale now at the festival official websitewww.woodfordfolkfestival.com.
Organisers are offering a 35% discount for early birds.
