We were thrilled, grateful - and hugely relieved! – that our newly-revived Oxford Folk Festival proved a success earlier this year. Now we are gearing up, hoping to do it all again on the weekend of April 11th-13th 2025. In fact, although OFF’24 was over by 22nd April this year, some of us never went away. Our team got together and agreed on the dates for OFF’25 just days after our first festival was over, so that planning could start. Our letters of thanks to the organisations and institutions who kindly donated performance areas to us last April included a plea to reserve the same space for us on the weekend of 11th-13th April 2025, and there were visits to possible new performance areas, along with various other plans being tentatively explored.
One such plan is already in place and is an idea that grew out of our commitment to keeping the enthusiasm and energy of ‘OFF’ alive during the year. This year, with the wonderful support of Common Ground, we have piloted two ‘off-OFF’ gigs which provide performers who played for us last April another opportunity to find an audience. The first concert was held on October 11th and highlighted the emerging talents of young traditional bands, Tamise and Quest for Folk, with the additional support of the already established HalfPipe and Katie Grace Harris who, besides being an excellent performer, does so much to engage young people in folk music. We hope that next April Katie will again offer youth workshops in the Westgate Public Library. Parents and supporters of young potential folkies please be on the alert for an announcement about these free workshops next year, as space is limited and earlier this year demand outstripped supply.
We were delighted that our first gig at Common Ground found an appreciative audience; this support has helped us raise much needed funds for OFF’25. Thank you!
Our next fundraising ‘off-OFF’ concert will, as recently announced on our OFF Facebook and group pages, take place at Common Ground on Friday November 8th. We embrace folk in all its genres, and this concert offers the work of a skilled singer-songwriter, along with a group of lively instrumentalists who tackle everything from Turlough O’Carolan to Django Reinhardt, and from J.S. Bach to Van Morrison. As with our first concert, the event is not ticketed, but we invite a contribution of £6 at the door. It will be a lovely evening, and we hope you will support this event.
If these two off-Off gigs prove popular, plans are in place to hold further off-OFFS in the new year, so please watch out for future announcements.
There have been some lovely ripple effects following OFF’24. For example, we were delighted that the wonderful Covered Market, which always forms the hub of our Festival, chose to include OFF performers – players and dancers – in celebrations held there on May morning 2024. And in September, some of our supporters also featured in the Covered Market 250th Anniversary events, including Steph Pirrie and Milady Clare’s Musicke (tasters here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaUwmrHL5lk).
Moving on to thoughts about next April: we are hoping that many of the musicians who gave us their time and talent in April this year will choose to return in April 2025, but we always look forward to hearing from new performers who are welcome to contact us. (One way is via messenger on the OFF group page.) I’ll be starting work on timetabling from late November but there will still be some flexibility until well into next year.
Remember: the deal is that our lovely central Oxford locations donate their space to us; performers are similarly asked to donate their time and skills during their sets. If they wish, performers may display their contact details with a QR code. Although at the moment we still have no formal funding, we are raising funds through our off-OFF concerts, and next year we hope to have better signage, including QR codes on display, to facilitate donations to OFF.
GR/11/24