I didn't manage to make it to the festival, except for a fleeting visit on Sunday afternoon. There were so many people around that we couldn't find anywhere to park so had to come away as we were due elsewhere.
I have, though, had a lot of feedback from people who did attend (I was once on the organising committee of the original festival, and old habits die hard with people).The general consensus seems to be that the weekend was, in effect, a festival fringe without a festival. One performer complained that she thought she had been booked for a folk festival 'not a local carnival' and wouldn't be doing it again. Some of the stallholders, too, complained that they had been mislead into thinking there would be a lot of 'folkies' around for them to sell to, and that the (mainly local) general public weren't interested.
So, yes, I'd say the main priority for the future is to change the name to more accurately reflect the new nature of the festival. It would be unfortunate indeed if folk music fans who visited the old Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival in its heyday were to return and find it transmogrified into a community festival catering mostly to the local population and featuring music designed to appeal to that same broader audience.
'Middlewich Community Festival' would be an ideal name.