Woodford
Folk Festival

I have just returned from the Woodford Folk Festival. Held near the small town of Wood-ford about an hour and a half ’s drive North of Brisbane in Queensland over the New Year period each year this is no insignificant event.
Woodford is one of the largest events held in Australia, and the Southern hemisphere for that matter, and has been so successful over the years it has bought its own 200 hectare former dairy farm for its venue.

The site is situated in a hidden valley surrounded by forested hills with open fields at the entrance to the valley, which serve as campsites, car parks and service areas. This is an immersion event best enjoyed by staying on the site for the six days and nights duration. Arriving at the site is an amazing spectacle with tents as far as the eye can see with around 22,000 people living on the site at any one time, the total attendance is around 130,000 people.

The festival has an incredibly varied programme presenting a wide range of performance styles, musical genres and nationalities in a series of events held in 39 continuously running venues. The programme includes concerts, dances,workshops, lectures, debates, demonstrations, music sessions and street performances with performers drawn from all over Australia and from overseas. The Festival has gained a high reputation nationally and this year included former Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Bob Hawk in its programme. The site becomes a small town with tents and marquees arranged as streets of stalls, restaurants, bars and performance venues.

The Festival ends on the evening of New Year’s Day with a closing ceremony featuring a spectacular Fire Event.

This extraordinary event is the creation of a visionary man called Bill Hauritz who was recently awarded the Order of Australia for Woodford Folk Festival his work. I was involved in the early planning of the event and I watched and worked with Bill over the years and in turn went on to run the National Folk Festival in Canberra. I was well placed to study Bill’s approach. A true leader with a strong vision Bill turned many established conventions on their head. He did not believe, for example, in cold advertising. His marketing has always been based on the power of word of mouth. It is a low cost and highly effective approach but has the downside in that it can work in reverse. His goal has always been to turn anyone who comes through the front gate into a salesperson for the future.

There are many factors that go together to make up the richness of Woodford. This is no shallow event and has many underlying themes to give it depth and meaning such as a well devised strand of environmental teaching and awareness that runs through everything they do. As part of this they have regular tree planting programmes to revegetate the site and hundreds of thousands of trees have been planted over the years.

Other issues include indigenous peoples rights, political issues, various forms of discrimination and a sense of equality amongst all who attend. These initiatives are all incorporated in a light unobtrusive way that in no way detract from the core event.

Woodford is a major logistical undertaking progressively developed by Bill since the first event in 1987. It is largely selffunding, quite an achievement when you consider that most
festivals depend on considerable levels of government or sponsorship support. This year was particularly difficult with heavy rains for weeks before the event. Thousands of immovable cars filled the campsites sunk up to their axles in mud. People crawled from their sodden tents, put on their wellingtons and carried on, an incredible event that brings the best out of people, which leads me, to what is, for me, an important point.

Years after I moved on from Woodford and was running my own event I wasregularly asked a challenging question. “Why is it that so many thousands of people, people of all ages, nationalities and socio economicgroups,come together at these events and there are none of the usual problems ofarguments,fights, theft, vandalism or other crime that plagues the outside world?”

It was question I pondered for years. My answer was that in modern times when people live without tribal or family support networks around them they are searching for a sense of belonging. They relish the opportunity to be a part of a community and as a result they become community minded and take on the shared responsibility of protecting that community.

“Ah but this isn’t the real world,” people would respond “outside that fence is the real world.” I don’t agree and feel that if only our
politicians and governments could open their eyes and learn what these events could teach us the world could be a better place for us all.

Here in Bali I see, a similar example, a society which still retains it’s strong sense of community. Here everyone has a role to play, old people are looked after and respected and young people with a sense of there own identity proudly continue to uphold the values and traditions of the past. The result is a cohesive, self-regulating society that lives in harmony with itself, shares decision-making and works towards mutual goals.

The leaders of the world could learn great things both from these festivals and from Balinese society – if it would only listen.Woodford ended and a week later I flew out of Brisbane, the floods struck and the population of Queensland was brought together as one huge community working together to recover from a devastating natural disaster.

Phil Wilson