Let There Be Folk!

Starting off life humbly as the Maleny Folk Festival way back in 1987, the annual cultural shindig Woodford Folk Festival – which moved to its now spiritual home of Woodfordia in 1994 – has been evolving gradually and at its own pace for nearly 30 years. While the first bash drew just under a thousand punters, last year WFF gathered in excess of 113,000 people to its six days of music, dance, cabaret, comedy, visual art, workshops, children's entertainment and of course their feted New Year's Eve fire spectacular.

One person who's been there from the outset is Festival Director Bill Hauritz, and he's justifiably proud of having overseen WFF grow from its humble beginnings into Australia's largest community-driven cultural event.

“We're non-profit – any surpluses we just bury back into the festival – so nobody owns it in terms of equity,” he explains. “This has caused problems as we've grown, because the only way we can invest in it is to raise funds. We can make profits, but profits from a six-day event held in the middle of the Queensland summer has got rocks in it for a solid business plan, let me tell you! If it's not flooding it's a heatwave.

“So the profits from a six-day event – and we aim to make a profit, don't get me wrong, we aim to make a profit somewhere about $500 000 – but from that we have to build and maintain the infrastructure. We've got our own sewerage treatment plan, we make our own town water, we've built 48 amenity blocks – so the cost of infrastructure has been a real difficulty. In private enterprise we could've sought investors, but when you're a non-profit community you can't get equity – fundraising, getting a government grant or making a profit is the only way you can do it – and we've struggled with infrastructure over the years.”

Of course logistical concerns wouldn't be a problem if crowd numbers reached a plateau, but – against the prevailing market trends – the number of happy punters at WFF keeps climbing each year.

“Growth has been our issue – there's never been a year where we've been disappointed with how many people came. Which is always the nice side of the ledger to be on,” Hauritz chuckles. “We've broadened the festival out [from its pure folk origins], and in 1995 we made a really positive step to connect to contemporary musicians when we had Midnight Oil and Powderfinger – that was really something.

“There's a strong traditional folk program as well, but it's music 'of the people' – of the ordinary people – which is how we look at it. And music's only half the program; we look at the contemporary issues of the environment, medicine and alternative health issues – they're all huge facets. The speakers program is at least 20 percent of the whole thing, and then you add comedy and dance and the children's festival and you can start to see the break-up of what happens – there's a very broad age group demographic as well which we really love. We have a strong youth program and the biggest segment of attendees would be 18-30 year-olds, but nine percent of our crowd is 60-plus and there's several thousand children there which is just brilliant having families feel welcome.

“These days we don't purposefully book big name acts – it's happened, because there are people who have grown up with the festival and become big names and then they want to come back and perform, usually for a lot less than their commercial fee. But usually we avoid the big names – Woodford is one of those events where you mightn't know anyone on the program and it's like a discovery tour. We've got some absolutely fantastic acts playing this year that nobody's ever heard of. Yet.”

And while Hauritz is proud of what he's built with WFF, he's certainly not averse to sharing the plaudits.

“There's certainly a sense of achievement, and it's not just me – I'm one of a large team of people. I'm the spokesman for it, but really and truthfully it's the team that makes the whole thing work, not one person.  If there's one thing that I've learnt since the beginning is that what makes a great festival is thousands of volunteers making great little decisions, rather than one person making big decisions. You build up a momentum from the people up and not from the boss down – that's what makes a successful festival I believe, and that's the essence of Woodford.”