The show is built onsite from the ground-up, using mostly reclaimed building waste and up-cycled materials. Over six weeks, the dedicated team grows from 6 to 160 and consists of professional artists, makers and volunteers from around the world.

Ceremonies Producer, Aaron Austin-Glen explains that, “The fabric of each ceremony draws threads from all corners of the organisation. They are truly collaborative projects coming from the heart of Woodfordia.”

As always, the team have prepared a version of the Closing Ceremony that does not culminate in the burning of the main sculpture. Due to the drought and current weather conditions, the show will go ahead as planned, however the main sculpture will not be burned.  There are also plans for not using pyrotechnics or fire effects.

“This is one of our most ambitious projects to date – it’s nothing short of a gargantuan feat of artistry, hard work, resourcefulness and more than a bit of sweat,” said Ceremony Writer and Director, Alex Podger. “Without giving away too much, it is a trilogy about a strange boy called Emir, who finds an abandoned hatchling and raises it. Before too long, the boy and his bird become a youth with a phoenix and a summer of childhood adventures unfolds.”

The puppet, Emir, is a collaboration between theatrical designer Bryan Woltjen (AUS), who created the ‘Sphere People’ of last year’s show and co-created the Auryx for the 2017/18 festival; Orla Clogher (IRE) and Dave Young (ENG), known for their work with spectacle theatre company, Macnas; and Jozef Koda (HK/AUS), known for his costume work with Franco Dragone, one of Cirque du Soleil’s founding directors. Five puppets are being created for this year’s event, and the team are exploring new ways of telling folk tales through puppetry, large images, costume and effects.

This ambitious puppet creation has only been made possible with project funding from the Arts Queensland’s Queensland Arts Showcase Program Fund. General Manager Amanda Jackes thanks the Queensland Government for their ongoing support. “This funding has given our team the opportunity to work with some of the best puppet makers in the world. The impact of this is that our Australian large-scale theatre workers will have collaboration and skill development opportunities in this production that they would previously have needed to travel abroad for.”

The music is composed specifically for the event by a team of composers, songwriters and sound designers, and performed with guest artists and Woodfordia’s own orchestra and choir. 400 festival patrons learn the score each morning of the festival to play it live together, for the first and only time, on New Year’s Day.

The addition of a large all-natural lake to the festival grounds was announced only last week and has garnered an outpouring of excitement from the festival community.

“We’re thrilled to provide our Season Campers, volunteers and performers with the opportunity to swim in our beautiful Lake Gkula, although we are also aware of the irony and potential insensitivity of opening a human-made lake during a drought” said Hauritz. “Rainfalls onsite have been few and far between, but we were fortunate enough to source all the water for Lake Gkula from onsite dams and a top up from a bore.”

Ceremonies have always held a special significance for Woodford Folk Festival, as a place for annual traditions, rituals and customs. The 34th annual festival commences on 27 December and the forecast is looking very promising for patrons, with temperatures sitting below average for the duration of the festival. The Woodford Folk Festival closing ceremony is on Wednesday 1st January 2020.

‘Woodford Folk Festival is supported by the Queensland Government through Tourism and Events Queensland and features on the It’s Live! in Queensland events calendar.

Woodford Folk Festival
27 December 2019 to 1 January 2020
www.woodfordfolkfestival.com/tickets

The 4.8 by 3.4 metre canvas was unveiled on Sunday 11 August at an on-site working bee of 250 enthusiastic people and is the official poster for the 2019/20 Woodford Folk Festival.

‘Imagining a Beautiful Future’ is the theme for the next three festivals. Festival General Manager, Amanda Jackes, explains that the theme aims to assist festival programmers in integrating the thousands of events across the festival.

“While we celebrate the festival’s diversity, we see the event as one canvas, many colours – we hope the poster reflects that,” she said.

“This poster is the first panel in a triptych that aims to embody the theme and acts as a storyboard for organisers as they envision what the next three years of the festival holds.

“Having a three-year vision really pushes us to be more out there in our planning and in our imagining – we go deeper,” said Jackes.

Woodfordia’s Artist in Residence, Gavin Ryan, is the man behind Woodford Folk Festival’s posters of the last ten years. Ryan’s creative process in the past saw him holed up in his studio for months on end, pouring over hundreds of layers in large Photoshop files. This year however, he has been facilitating public mural projects in Woodfordia’s outdoors.

Ryan believes that making the switch to a hand-made, community-driven process resonates deeply with this year’s theme. What was once a solo mission has become the concerted effort of hundreds of hands.

Festival Director, Bill Hauritz, explains that this theme was chosen with the intention of counteracting some of the negative rhetoric surrounding the future of the world.

Hauritz however clarifies that, “Optimism can be a dangerous thing. We don’t want to inspire false hope, but we must be able to imagine together a brighter, more promising future if we are to have any chance of creating one.”

Ryan and his team of volunteers prepared the canvas with the linework and overall composition of his final poster design. The first round of public participation was at the 2019 Planting Festival in early May and the second, some weeks later at
Woodfordia’s Parliament Day. Both events were filled with Woodfordians eager to add their mark.

Festival patrons were given a brush, a thumb-pot of acrylic paint and an invitation to express their creativity. Each participant was briefed about the theme of the artwork and encouraged to think of a meaningful symbol or motif that, to them, expressed that subject.

Ryan explains that the palpable sense of ownership and achievement felt by all those to who stood back to survey the finished canvas was a wonderful validation of the change of process. “The wildly detailed and lusciously complex poster that has been created by a multitude of different hands is a potent example of the total being more than the sum of its parts, in the same way that Woodford Folk Festival itself is,” says Ryan.

The full programme for Woodford Folk Festival 2019/20 is scheduled for unveiling on the 12 October 2019. It is expected to comprise of 1100 programmed events across 25 stages.

Woodford Folk Festival
27 December 2019 to 1 January 2020
www.woodfordfolkfestival.com

The self-contained pop-up village will welcome more than 2000 artists, performers and presenters; 8000 campers; and an aggregate attendance of 125,000 people for the 33rd annual Woodford Folk Festival from 27 December 2018 to 1 January 2019.

When complete, there will be 25 stages, 200 shops, 60 cafes and food vendors, 14 bars, chill out areas, a creche, general stores, medical facilities well as state-of-the-art water and waste water treatment systems, recycling stations and compost facilities.

The site, this year, sees more infrastructure innovation than ever before including new sealed roads throughout the season campsite, ensuring a dust free experience and new camping options including glamping tee-pees and dome tents, along with the quirky eco-friendly cardboard KarTent.

Standing tall alongside these eco-innovations for the 2018/19 Festival is the newly commissioned state of the art shade structure, designed by an international designer and the team of architects at Sydney based design collaborative Cave Urban.

Visitors will enjoy increased levels of respite from the summer sun during the 2018/19 Woodford Folk Festival, with the introduction this eco-friendly bamboo and shade sail cloth. Woodford Folk Festival General Manager Amanda Jackes says while 110,000 trees have been planted on site over the years, organisers haven’t been able to provide enough shade for patrons on the streets and mini amphitheatres in the festival proper until now.

“This year we’re working with Cave Urban to trial an installation which we hope will be rolled out on other streets in further years,” she says.

“We hope it will be great respite from the sun for some lazy shopping and dashing between venues to follow your new favourite festival performer.”

The structure will run some of the length of Dancing in the Street – the new pathway in the heart of the festival running the length of the new Luna venue. Other shade installations are street shading on some of the length of Sun Rise – the main thoroughfare to the Amphitheatre. Shaded seating at the Blues venue and shaded seating in a new dedicated circus venue Cirque, along with the Greenhouse venue will also provide patrons with more spaces to relax and stay cool.

Organisers have been buoyed by what they are calling the best weather forecast in the history of the festival. Woodford Folk Festival Director Bill Hauritz says “We think the festival is a great offering in any weather conditions but this year the stars have been shining on us. It will be a cool festival, this is the year”.

With only three weeks to go until Woodford Folk Festival kicks off for 2018/19 Woodfordia is set to be transformed, ready to welcome the largest gathering of artists and musicians in the country; presenting 1214 shows in 25 venues across six days, equating to over 2410 hours of performance.

Don’t miss your chance to experience complete Wood-FORIA with season tickets, day tickets, vehicle passes, camping permits and accommodation on sale now via woodfordfolkfestival.com/tickets. #thisistheyear.

Woodford Folk Festival
27 December 2018 – 1 January 2019
Woodfordia, Queensland
www.woodfordfolkfestival.com