Woodford Folk Fest 'Unclear' About Event's Future After Biggest Year Ever

By all accounts (including our own), the 2016 Woodford Folk Festival was an incredible, distinctively rewarding event.

The annual festival, which turned 31 in December, welcomed an overall patron count of 132,000 over its six-day duration, representing a more-than-5 percent growth to its attendance between 2015 and last year as, in the words of founder and director Bill Hauritz, it continues to develop as "a hub for creativity, attracting some great minds" to the event's home of Woodfordia.

"It has been a most beautiful festival in almost every way but our future is unclear." 

The attendance figure, which is bolstered further by the over-2000 artists and performers who graced the 2016 bill, is the largest crowd ever attracted by the yearly event, and certainly signifies a great deal of positives for the organisers.

However, as Hauritz explained in a statement, the consistent rise in patrons has led to the inevitable unearthing of infrastructure issues with the festival's site.

As a result, he said, issues with "Raw water storage and dusty and broken roads took the edge off what was a truly wonderful event".

"It has been a most beautiful festival in almost every way but our future is unclear," Hauritz said.

"Dust was a big problem we have to fix, and the roads — they're just not up to required standards," he continued. "That's just the beginning of our infrastructure issues, but it's been an amazing event this year … it's been an inspiration for many of us".

Although organisers are not yet clear on the exact strategies and solutions they will pursue to rise to those challenges, Hauritz told The Music that, at the very least, the festival's location is secure.

"There has been a huge investment made at Woodfordia over the past 22 years; we can't just pick it up and run," he said. "It feels we're almost there with our own high-tech sewage treatment plant and our own town water-making facility among 55 permanently built amenity blocks, and really-good-quality office facility and storage".

"The easy solution is money, but we'd like to mitigate that with innovative solutions."

Consequently, although the issues ahead are plentiful, they are not insurmountable: "They are fixable," Hauritz assured. "We've been innovative in finding solutions to the many issues facing us in the past but there are a few that have been testing.

"We're optimists. The growth in popularity of the festival has surprised us."

Hauritz fully expects, then, that he and his team will successfully troubleshoot the current issues weighing upon the festival's infrastructure ahead of next year, though he's under no misguidance as to the scope of the undertaking.

"We are trying to solve lots of issues, not just one or two," he said. "The easy solution is money, but we'd like to mitigate that with innovative solutions and we need to demonstrate strong benefit beyond or borders. We have a lot of clever people who want to help, and a large volume of volunteers on our team."

Most importantly, however, the Woodford faithful can rest assured that a lack of clarity about the future is not the same as a lack of confidence — quite the opposite. In fact, whatever renovations ultimately take place at Woodfordia to help bolster its capabilities to continue welcoming larger crowds, Hauritz is adamant that the festival is not going anywhere, in any sense.

"No, we couldn't do that," he says in response to the prospect of having to miss a year to resolve the issues. "We'd be afraid to lose a huge proportion of our wonderful patrons who come here every year, hell or high water."

"Funding will be vital to ensure this site receives much-needed infrastructure upgrades."

With a post-event report from Education & Tourism Minister Kate Jones indicating that the festival injects more than $30 million into the Queensland economy (including $16 million in the local Woodford region and surrounds), its importance to the region is demonstrable and widely acknowledged.

The call for support has been keenly adopted by the area's officials, with Moreton Bay Regional Council Mayor Allan Sutherland also going to bat for the festival.

"With such a successful year of festival attendance and camping numbers, it has never been more important for all levels of government to provide funding support and certainty to Woodfordia Inc. to turn Woodfordia into a destination worthy of ongoing national and international acclaim," he said.

"Funding will be vital to ensure this site receives much-needed infrastructure upgrades including permanent staging, toilets and amenities, dust control, roads, and camping space for this iconic Australian festival and Woodfordia itself to grow and flourish."