There’s excitement spreading through Woodfordia with this announcement of Woodford Folk Festival 18/19 ticket launch. It is delivered with a regeneration of the optimism and energy that drives all of us here.
We’re grateful to those of you who participated in our recent survey “Make Woodford Better”. We appreciate your honesty and could certainly sense your love for our festival. Reading through the survey results we realise the diversity of Woodford patrons. One person’s adamant view is that we should do one thing and the next person’s view is the polar opposite. In all, there’s a great body of opinion which will help propel us to make change and hone our craft. We were all moved by the wonderful stories you shared – these more than anything have regenerated our enthusiasm and we thank you for that. It is the remembered moments that speak volumes about the festival and its people.
As the survey was anonymous and in the interests of transparency, we’ve published the results in its entirety. You can click on this link and read through. It makes for a fascinating study and does capture the beautiful community that Woodfordia is. It reminded us how deeply so many people felt and we realised we’ve taken the odd complaint communications too much to heart.
Now we promise to do our part. There’ll be improvements and some directional adjustments this year. We’re building new venues, changing the layout and refreshing the programme. We’re being louder on climate action, human rights – especially that of our First Nations people, the future of the Great Barrier Reef and celebrating the richness and authenticity of Australia’s cultural expression through a magnificent line-up of Artists and Presenters. There are other things happening right now that we can’t reveal but as the year unfolds, we’ll keep you informed.
We have listened to your feedback and understand that our 17/18 ticket price increase at the same time as introducing the vehicle/parking fees and a premium on New Year’s Eve tickets was too much. We have removed the NYE premium and have made some decreases in ticket prices especially in youth prices. While we’re retaining the car parking fees (at the last festival a third of Season Camping vehicles parked outside the shaded campgrounds), these vehicle/parking fees have also been reduced.
We are able to make these reductions because of the excellent infrastructure funding we secured from the Qld Government and Moreton Bay Regional Council in November last year. This funding provides the certainty we need for critical infrastructure requirements over the next three years. Works which have commenced include vital upgrades to both our Water Treatment and Wastewater Treatment Plants, upgraded sewer and water lines in the festival precinct, electrical distribution works, construction of new amenities and replacement of the Ponte Grande bridge.
For those who are already planning on escaping to Woodfordia at the end of this year, we encourage you to buy now and take advantage of the early-bird ticket rounds. Payment Plans are available on all tickets.
We would love it if you could share our tickets launch news with your family and friends and maybe entice a new festivillian along this year – we so often hear people say it’s on their bucket list but they simply haven’t got around to it – maybe this is the year for them. We know that no amount of facebook posts, newspaper articles, or radio mentions ever go near the one-on-one ‘you must come’ conversation. If you can help us here and share your stories, we would be so grateful.
We have now launched Lorestream, a digital collection of archival footage of Woodford Folk Festival, as a component of our Woodfordia Citizens programme. While it is early days, we are pretty ambitious about this project and hope to see much of the festival captured here and into the future. Really, it’s just an excuse so we (organisers) can get to see what happens at the festival 🙂 If you are interested in becoming a Woodfordia Citizen, please click here. We’d like to think that the Woodfordian Community might be one you’d love to belong to.
As always we’re dedicated to creating a festival which delivers first and foremost, a great festival experience. We hope you’ll make it this year.
