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Post Folk Festival
Jun. 11th, 2019 10:32 am I am absolutely shattered.
I don't tend to post much about the voluntary work I do for Wimborne Minster Folk Festival, largely because I feel it inappropriate to talk about stuff from committee meetings (in the same way as people don't comment on stuff they do as paid work).
Let's just say that it takes up a large amount of my time.
The festival for this year is over.
I organised 60 traditional dance groups, mostly morris dancers, but also Irish, Bulgarian, Appalachian, clog/step dancing, longsword, rapper sword and the Gurkhas from the nearby army base at Blandford.
I provided a series of dance workshops, ceilidh, organised almost the entire children's programme (Punch and Judy, Circus skills, maypole dancing, crafts, broom dancing, mumming workshop), organised the procession with 50 dance teams, and a boat.
I organised talks and workshops ranging from a detailed (and accurate) talk on morris history, to playing pipe and tabor.
Thanks to my husband's software, we managed a dance programme well in advance of the festival, with a minimum break of half an hour between performances for each team, managed to minimise overlaps for teams who share dancers/musicians, adhered to all requests for specific surfaces (eg. can't dance on brick, need to be on a stage, etc.)
We had dancing all around the town, outside pubs, in the Square, in the Cornmarket, the High St, Model Town, etc.
The atmosphere was amazing. By Sunday morning, there had been 50,000 people in town (police estimate), and the number for the weekend as a whole will certainly be higher than that.
I've never had so much positive feedback from happy dancers, including many teams who were dancing at Wimborne for the first time.
It's the strongest dance line-up we've ever had. I know most of you aren't dancers, so won't recognise the names but I shall post videos over the next week or so as people post them, so you can see some of the amazing teams we had. (for those who are dancers, here's the line up )
I was recovering from a sprained ankle, so I hired a mobility scooter to help me go round all the venues. That was definitely worth while. It enabled me to walk when I needed to (Mainly when stacking the queue for the procession) and then give the ankle a good rest.
You get to do everything in this job, from mopping the Cornmarket stage after a very heavy shower, to just sitting back in the sunshine and watching a fabulous performance by Customs and Exiles.
What do dancers do when it rains? (which it did for about an hour on Saturday morning, before settling into happy sunshine for the rest of the festival)
Here's Drew from Knights of King Ina!
I don't tend to post much about the voluntary work I do for Wimborne Minster Folk Festival, largely because I feel it inappropriate to talk about stuff from committee meetings (in the same way as people don't comment on stuff they do as paid work).
Let's just say that it takes up a large amount of my time.
The festival for this year is over.
I organised 60 traditional dance groups, mostly morris dancers, but also Irish, Bulgarian, Appalachian, clog/step dancing, longsword, rapper sword and the Gurkhas from the nearby army base at Blandford.
I provided a series of dance workshops, ceilidh, organised almost the entire children's programme (Punch and Judy, Circus skills, maypole dancing, crafts, broom dancing, mumming workshop), organised the procession with 50 dance teams, and a boat.
I organised talks and workshops ranging from a detailed (and accurate) talk on morris history, to playing pipe and tabor.
Thanks to my husband's software, we managed a dance programme well in advance of the festival, with a minimum break of half an hour between performances for each team, managed to minimise overlaps for teams who share dancers/musicians, adhered to all requests for specific surfaces (eg. can't dance on brick, need to be on a stage, etc.)
We had dancing all around the town, outside pubs, in the Square, in the Cornmarket, the High St, Model Town, etc.
The atmosphere was amazing. By Sunday morning, there had been 50,000 people in town (police estimate), and the number for the weekend as a whole will certainly be higher than that.
I've never had so much positive feedback from happy dancers, including many teams who were dancing at Wimborne for the first time.
It's the strongest dance line-up we've ever had. I know most of you aren't dancers, so won't recognise the names but I shall post videos over the next week or so as people post them, so you can see some of the amazing teams we had. (for those who are dancers, here's the line up )
I was recovering from a sprained ankle, so I hired a mobility scooter to help me go round all the venues. That was definitely worth while. It enabled me to walk when I needed to (Mainly when stacking the queue for the procession) and then give the ankle a good rest.
You get to do everything in this job, from mopping the Cornmarket stage after a very heavy shower, to just sitting back in the sunshine and watching a fabulous performance by Customs and Exiles.
What do dancers do when it rains? (which it did for about an hour on Saturday morning, before settling into happy sunshine for the rest of the festival)
Here's Drew from Knights of King Ina!
