Written evidence submitted by the Folk Day Trust

Tenterden Folk Festival DCMS enquiry into the Future of UK Music Festivals

INTRODUCTION

The Trust Tenterden Folk Day Trust is an independent registered charity formed in May 1994 to preserve and advance public education and appreciation of traditional and contemporary folk music, song, dance and other related traditions, crafts and folk arts as a part of the living heritage. The Trust is supported by Tenterden Town Council, Ashford Council and County Council and an increasing number of local and regional businesses and other community organisations.

Musical and heritage policy The emphasis of our musical policy remains very much on traditional English folk music, song and dance. This is complemented by traditional crafts, folklore and traditions. By its very nature traditional folk music develops and changes, so we do not exclude contemporary material in a traditional style or performers who bring in experience of other musical styles or musical influences. We draw many of our guests from South East , particularly Kent, and Sussex, and also include many guests well known on the national folk scene. We also feature “overseas” song and dance particularly where this has a connection with the local area through the material or performers.

The Trust is affiliated to the English Folk Dance and Song Society and a member of The Ashford Federation of the Arts, The Association of Festival Organisers, Produced in Kent and registered with The Fundraising Regulator.

Tenterden Folk Festival The annual Tenterden Folk Festival takes place over the weekend of the first Saturday of October. The festival starts on Thursday with a special fundraising concert sponsored by Around Kent Folk magazine. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday there are over 50 events including an English barn dance, storytelling for adults and children, concerts, craft fair, artisan, music and other stalls, exhibitions, shows, dance displays, folk clubs, Morris dancers, Appalachian dancers, Slovakian Dancers, sing-a-rounds and music sessions, procession, street theatre, West Gallery music, workshops, Showcases and other folk events. The festival website is www.tenterdenfolkfestival.org.uk

Morris sides; the festival offers Morris sides and dance display teams a chance to get together and see each other perform and to meet socially in a friendly and casual atmosphere. There are up to 50 sides present, with around half coming from Kent, Surrey and Sussex and the others from all over the rest of England. Most styles of Morris are represented including Border and Cotswold Morris, with men's and women's sides, also Longsword, Rapper, Garland, Clog and Molly dancers. Other dance display styles can include Scottish, Appalachian, Bangra, Bulgarian and Slovakian dancers. As well as the displays and workshops, the dancers all take part in a grand procession, together with Hooden horses, animal guisers and street entertainers.

Sing-a-rounds and sessions; some of the most popular events at the festival are always the free sing-a-rounds and song and music sessions. Local singers and musicians crowd the bars and back rooms of various public houses to take their turn to perform or to join in the music sessions. They are joined by some of the festival guests who appreciate a chance to join in the grass roots of the music where most of them actually started.

Festival guests; in addition to many local performers from Kent, Surrey and Sussex, guests booked for the festival have included many of the country's leading folk musicians and barn dance bands. Overseas Guests; the festival is pleased to welcome traditional folk groups from overseas, particularly where there is a local connection or special interest. We also include local groups that play "world music". Our overseas guests have includes groups from Belgium, Romania, Slovakia, Holland and Germany. We have also been pleased to welcome folk musicians from the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

Tenterden Folk Club Tenterden Folk Club is a free sing-a-round style club that meets in the bar of The William Caxton in Tenterden High Street on the second Tuesday of every month. Singers and musicians from all over Kent and Sussex meet with local performers from Ashford and Tenterden to sing and play a wide variety of traditional and contemporary acoustic music. Performers may include unaccompanied singers of traditional folk songs; a mouth-organ player who mixes popular 1920's tunes with Morris dance tunes; a singer songwriter who specialises in songs about Kent; a family who play a variety of traditional Irish music; a duo singing music hall songs; individual musicians playing guitar, melodeon, concertina, double bass, banjo, whistles, flute, violin, etc. It just depends who turns up on the night! One of the ideas of the club is to give as many people as possible a chance to join in, if they want to. The club occasionally organises a special event for which a guest may be booked.

Around Kent Folk magazine The Trust publishes Around Kent Folk magazine, a bi-monthly free guide to the folk events in Kent, Surrey, Sussex and beyond. AKF also includes news, editorials, reviews and other information. The magazine is funded by advertising revenue. AKF is sent by post to subscribers and distributed through local venues, libraries, etc. and is also available on line at www.aroundkentfolk.org.uk,

Educational projects The Trust also organises various educational projects. The best known of these has been "Bards, Ballads and Beyond" which was an annual project supported by and and was open to all schools, colleges, youth clubs, adult education centres, etc. within the Borough at a subsidised rate. This enabled us to arrange for professional folk musicians to visit a school or similar venue to run workshops on traditional folk music, song and dance for a day(s), half day or evening. Each workshop, with at least two visiting performers catered for up to 40 participants. This project ran from 1997 to 2013 and benefited many 100’s of students.

In 2019 the Trust received a grant from Kent Community Foundation to run workshops with children with special needs in local schools. These workshops were run at The Wyvern School in Ashford where our workshop leaders worked with a group of special needs students many of whom are in wheelchairs and have communication difficulties. These workshops continued into early 2020 when they were postponed until it is safe to start.

Occasional concerts, barn dances and ceilidhs The Trust also promotes occasional concerts, barn dances and ceilidhs during the year, mostly, but not always, in the Tenterden and Ashford area. We have been involved in concerts of Kentish folk songs, concerts with visiting artists who would not otherwise perform in the area and various special one off projects. The barn dances and ceilidhs have usually been promoted with local bands to bring them to the attention of a wider audience and introduce more people to barn dances and ceilidhs with mainly English music. We also co- ordinated three days of folk song, music and dance in the Produced in Kent Village at the Kent County Show in 2006.

The Trust as a folk animateur or local development agency The Trust is also happy to work with other community organisations, including local authorities, clubs, charities, companies, individuals and other bodies on joint ventures and to be involved in other compatible local arts projects. We can offer advice and assistance in organising folk events, such as barn dances, ceilidhs, concerts, workshops or other folk music, story-telling, folk-lore, craft and other related projects. We do not act as a booking agency for performers but we can often put organisers and artists in touch with each other and offer advice on where to find the type of folk performer or act an organisation is looking for. The Trust has worked with The Kent County Show, Produced in Kent, Ashford Borough Council, Create Festival, Revelation Ashford and many other local organisations.

Funding The Trust is a registered charity and the Trustees and organising committee are all volunteers. The Trustees and organising committee include folk enthusiasts, Borough and Town Councillors, local business people and other people interested in supporting local events. We are constantly in need of financial and practical help and support. We welcome grants and sponsorship from both local and national businesses, or other organisations, to assist in our charitable objective. The Trust regularly receives grants and other support from Tenterden Town Council, Ashford Borough Council and Kent County Council.

SUBMISSION TO THE DCMS COMMITTEE

What is the economic and cultural contribution of the UK’s festival industry? We can only comment on the cultural contributions that our own activities make locally. Tenterden Folk Festival is the only annual music festival in Tenterden and one of the few in Ashford and one of the longest established and most popular. The does not have a dedicated theatre or full time music and arts venue and relies on local churches, church halls, school, villages halls and the function rooms of public houses to host music and arts events. There are however at least two main dedicated sports centres in the Borough but these are not suitable for use for music and arts events due to the lack of suitable facilities. The nearest theatres and similar venues are , Tunbridge Wells, or each of which is around 20 miles away from Tenterden and only easily accessible by car. The four day Tenterden Folk Festival therefore offers local people a rare chance to experience a cultural activity locally and at a reasonable cost. The festival gives them the opportunity to experience performances by some of the best folk musicians in the country in their own small town. Our activities also give local people of all ages a chance to join in traditional English culture and interact with visiting musicians and dancers from across the country and overseas.

The economic contribution of the festival to the Tenterden economy is difficult to quantify as no formal research has, to my knowledge, ever been carried out. However back in 2014 during the presentation of the British Empire Medal the Lord Lieutenant of Kent mentioned a figure of at least £500,000. Over the four days of the festival in early October every hotel and bed and breakfast establishment in Tenterden and most of the nearby villages will be fully booked with festival goers also staying as far afield as Ashford, Cranbrook and other nearby towns. We also have a temporary campsite and other local commercial campsites are also used by festival goers. Pubs, cafes, and restaurants are used as festival venues and do record breaking trade over the festival weekend. Many other shops and supermarkets including Waitrose, Tesco support the festival. Public transport and petrol stations benefit from extra customers and car parks are always full.

What has been the impact of cancellations on local economies and those who derive income from festivals during 2020? Tenterden Folk club has not taken place since February and will definitely not restart until sometime in 2021, meaning that the venue, the William Caxton, has lost the revenue from club goers for at least 10 months. The Workshop at Wyvern School were also postponed meaning that the self employed workshop leaders have lost income for a similar period. The 28th Tenterden Folk Festival due to take place in October 2020 has been postponed to 2021 meaning that all our sound engineers, security staff, first aid staff, marquee and equipment hire companies and other contractors have lost substantial income. The festival includes around 50 craft and street stalls including musical instruments, food, local products, gifts, etc. and the stallholders have lost their income. The guests at the festival are mainly self employed musicians and dancers who have also lost the source of income. Hotels, bed and breakfast establishments, campsites, venues, public houses, shops, petrol stations and other traders have lost the substantial trade generated by the festival over the four days. Others who lost out include a group of students and Ashford College who would normally, as part of their course, have volunteered to help our PA and lighting engineers and therefore lost necessary work experience. Other students from Highworth School lost the opportunity to bring their Highworth Folk Band to the free music stage.

What are the risks to festivals taking place in 2021 and beyond, and how can these be mitigated? Tenterden Folk Festival is a town centre festival using a wide number of both indoor and outdoor venues including small function rooms, church halls, public house bars, Church, Town Hall, club rooms, etc as well as marquees on the Recreation Ground, forecourts and the streets themselves. As many of the indoor venues are small, some only holding up to 50 or 60 people, and none holding more than 200, the festival will not be able to take place in its present form while social distance is required. The festival does not take place in a defined and enclosable area and it is impossible to physically separate festival goers from shoppers, tourists and passers by so mass testing is also not an option. Moving the festival to a green field site where social distancing and mass testing are possible would change its character completely and would not be economically possible without substantial financial and logistical support from government and the local community. Our only hope for running the festival in the normal way in 2021 and beyond seems to be mass vaccine.

What measures are needed for audiences to attend festivals without social distancing, and how realistic are they? As stated above our only hope for running the festival in the normal way in 2021 and beyond without social distancing seems, at present, to be mass vaccine. We will also need venue owners, local authorities, festival goers and the public to have full confidence that the vaccines offer complete or substantial protection from the virus.

What has been the impact of the temporary VAT cut and Culture Recovery Fund on festivals and their supply chains, and what else can the Government do to secure their futures? Like many smaller volunteer run festivals Tenterden Folk Festival is not registered for VAT so the temporary VAT cut has had no effect. Similarly as a smaller festival we were not able to apply to the Culture Recovery Fund as the limit of £50,000 made an application impossible. Luckily we have been supported by Tenterden Town Council, Ashford borough Council and Kent Community Fund so, as long as the pandemic comes to an end in the next few months, our future should still be secure although we may have to modify the way we work and the way the festival takes place.

How has the structure of the UK festivals market evolved over recent years, and what has this meant for consumers, artists and the wider industry? What further changes might be anticipated? The number of folk festivals has great increased over recent years. When Tenterden Folk Festival started in 1993 is was probably the last festival of the year but now there are four or five festival nation wide over the same weekend and it is no longer the last of the season. Both the number and variety of festival has increased and there is a great number of green field site festivals. This of course means that a greater number of artists and contractors depend on festivals for all or most of their income. Festival goers have a wider choice of when to go to festivals and which festival to go to and attend more festivals that previously. Some of this growth may have been driven by improvements in technology and electronics making outdoor events more viable and easier to set up, increased car ownership and other social changes as well as more understanding and a widening of the appeal of of folk song and music dance. During the current pandemic many festivals, including Tenterden Folk Festival with #VirtuallyTenterden, have moved online using platforms such as Zoom, Face Book, Tumblr, Twitter, etc. This progression may well continue with festivals offering a mix of both live and virtual events and live streaming events during and between festivals. This will have licensing and copyright implication as well as changing the way artist generate their income and earnings. Festival promoters and workforces may all have to learn new technology skills and buy or hire new equipment.

How can festivals be supported to reduce their environmental impact and tackle the dangers of illegal drug use? Festivals attract large numbers of people and due to locations or other needs festivals goers frequently travel by car. Improved public transport and the introduction of temporary festival transport could cut the number of individual car journeys. Getting to and from Tenterden without a car can be extremely difficult especially late in the evening when festival events ends. Re-useable, compostable or biodegradable containers should be encouraged for takeaway food and drinks and the costs of purchase reduced. Easier access to low cost recycling facilities would enable festivals to reduce their impact on the local environment. Where a festival takes place over a wide area or a town centre and multiple venues, it is not possible to separately identify festival waste to collect and process it so much of it ends up going into general Town and Borough Council waste bins and general rubbish collections.

Drug use is not a major problem at most traditional folk festival. Audiences are normally older and more mature than audiences are general music festivals.