Wimborne Folk Festival

The tradition & historical record

Wimborne Minster Folk Festival took over from the previously known Wimborne Folk Festival in 2013 when the previous organisers retired in August 2012, after over 30 years organising the festival. The annual festival is still internationally recognised for its traditional English folk music and dance, held in the market town of Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England. ¹

The original festival was founded in 1979/82 (see below) as a traditional festival of folk dance and music. It began as a one-day event, but quickly grew to become a weekend-long festival, held annually over Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the second weekend in June. It is still one of the largest gathering of dance teams and musicians in the South of England, attracting an audience of up to 70,000 people. Several streets near the ancient Wimborne Minster are closed during the Festival. Attractions include concerts, ceilidhs, workshops, dance displays, street markets and family areas. The climactic scenes of the 2009 film Morris: A Life with Bells On, a mockumentary about morris dancing, were filmed at the festival. On 19 August 2012, it was announced on the official Wimborne Folk Festival website that, due to a lack of financial support, the 2012 festival that was held in June, would be the last. In September 2012, a small group of volunteers took the challenge of continuing the festival for 2013 and future years. With the change of organisers, the festival name was changed to Wimborne Minster Folk Festival following the request from the previous organisers. The new festival has been a huge success each year under new organisation and has kept the festival legacy alive. 2017 saw a substantial change of leadership, under which the festival continued to grow and expand its vision, including opening proceedings with a night of music and comedy, fed by the "Laugh Out Loud" comedy competition. In 2018, there were over 60 dance teams attending and it is estimated that 70,000 people came into Wimborne for the festival. ¹

1979 – Saturday 18 August – One day, one off event called "Wimborne Country Festival" 1980/81 - No events 1982 – "Wimborne Country Folk Festival" 11–13 June. Since then it has taken place every year. 1984 – a press report refers to this being the 3rd year (making 1982 the first) 1992 - a press interview with Brian Bisp refers to this being the 11th year (also making 1982 the first) 2010 - held from 11 to 13 June 2010, attracted 45 dance sides and an estimated crowd of 20,000 people. The 2019 Festival was from 6 to 9 June 2019. 2020 - cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Wimborne Minster Folk Festival”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Wimborne Folk Festival is annual festival, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²