Next Year's Sidmouth FolkWeek

As this year's festival season draws to a close, you'll be pleased to know that we're already planning for next year and, as usual, we'd like your help. Jim Moray summed it up recently on one of the internet chat lines: 'The important thing about Sidmouth, as someone who has attended most years of my life, is that it doesn't belong to "them" in the way that other festivals do, it belongs to everyone to make their own thing out of.' So please use the opportunity to 'make your own thing' out of Sidmouth by downloading our feedback questionnaire from the website www.sidmouthfolkweek.co.uk and when you've filled it in, either email it back to us (info@) or print it out and post it. Obviously we can't guarantee to grant all your wishes, but we'll do what we can. And you could win two season tickets for next year in the prize draw if you get it back to us before October 1st.

You may have heard rumours during the Festival that Eddie Upton was stepping down from his role as Artistic Director to concentrate on his 'day job' as Director of Folk South West. Eddie has played a leading part in developing the new organisation of Sidmouth FolkWeek and we are very grateful to him for the immense amount of effort and skill he has brought to bear on making the Festival sustainable. And the dancers among you will know that Ray Goodswen has retired this year, after 13 years of leadership of social dance at Sidmouth. Again, we are indebted to him for his enormous contribution to the new organisation. Thanks are also due to Graham O'Callaghan for the work he put into planning the concert programme in the last couple of years, and indeed to many others involved in different aspects of the programme. To quote Jim again: 'The programming was some of the nuttiest ever ... but on balance all the better for it'

We are pleased to announce that Joan Crump has been appointed as our new Artistic Director. Before joining the Sidmouth team, Joan was Programme Manager at Loughborough Town Hall, where she directed the highly successful Loughborough Folk Festival. Prior to that, she was the Education Manager at De Montfort Hall in Leicester, where she developed workshop programmes for outdoor festivals such as Summer Sundae and One World Leicester. Joan has also lectured in Arts Management at De Montfort University, and managed events for Leicester Comedy Festival. We count ourselves lucky to have found an Artistic Director with such solid credentials to take Sidmouth forward, and Joan is looking on it as 'an exciting and challenging opportunity'. She is already putting together a team of advisors, some old, some new, to ensure she is kept fully up to date with the different areas covered by the Sidmouth FolkWeek programme

Many of the improvements in the venues and on the camp site this year were a result of the Festival developing a partnership with Stage Electrics, and we are working with them to make further exciting improvements for the future. Watch this space, as they say!

We'll be in touch with you again around Christmas time with more information and the first details of the guest list, and season tickets will be on sale from the website from January 1st. You probably already know the dates of next year's Festival, but we'll remind you anyway, it runs from 31st July - 7th August, and we look forward to seeing you there.