From ceilidhs to poetry, the sheer number of participatory events held during Sidmouth Folk Festival makes it stand out among the UK's many summer music events.
Over half the 800-plus events in the programme – many of them free – offer festivalgoers the opportunity to hone existing skills and learn new ones in a fun, friendly environment. It’s even possible to start learning to play a new instrument at the beginning of the week and perform onstage in the festival finale.
On Monday alone, the choice of adult workshops included choral singing, Longsword dancing, tin whistle, percussive dance, storytelling, songwriting, fiddle, ukulele, Morris dancing, and the West Gallery and Shapenote chuch singing traditions – and all this before lunchtime!
Elsewhere, teenagers were enjoying their own packed Shooting Roots programme, including singing, storytelling, Funky World Band, dance and theatre. Families, too, were spoilt for choice, with a dedicated children's festival at the Peacock Lawn. Monday's events included Maypole dancing, singing, ceilidh dancing, yoga, Longsword dancing, drama, Bollywood dancing plus crafts such as making lanterns for the festival's closing procession, as well as the chance to show off those newly acquired skills in the Young Performers' Showcase.
The popularity of the children's craft workshops had adults calling for craft workshops of their own, and last year these were introduced at the Bulverton site. Intrigued by the sound of Monday's workshop on making a muster stool, I signed up to see if it was really possible for a person with zero woodworking experience to produce a piece of furniture from scratch without help from IKEA.
Once our group had assembled on the grass outside the Bulverton marquee, workshop leader Mark Clarke of Creativity Design and Production showed us what we'd be making. A muster stool, we learned, is a portable stool with detachable legs that can be taken apart and carried in a bag – the perfect festival accessory! Next, we were introduced to our materials – hazel branches for the legs and discs of chestnut wood for the seats.
For the next two hours, we sawed, whittled, drilled and sanded under the team's expert eyes until – yes! – we each had a finished stool of our very own.
No more hunting for festival seating for us! And I can't wait for the next workshop...
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