Video courtesy of John Reed
Video courtesy of Tay Kaka
Fairbridge Festival of World and Folk Music is Western Australia’s most popular family camping festival which takes place annually in April. It is a friendly celebration of folk, roots, blues, acoustic, celtic, a capella and world music in a traffic-free, self-contained bushland site at Fairbridge Village, South West Highway, 5 km north of Pinjarra, Western Australia.
This year, 2012, will be the 20th Fairbridge Festival and all the signs are that the momentum and enthusiasm continues to grow. The scene is set for another great weekend of joyous music making. As well as a growing number of top international, interstate and home grown artists there are the youth and children’s festivals, numerous workshops, street theatre, a vibrant markets area, poetry and much much more to enjoy.
Fairbridge Village makes a wonderful festival site, with graceful, mature bush and sweeping views over the Darling Escarpment about 100 km south of Perth’s outlying south-eastern suburbs. Over the weekend the site comes alive with music in numerous marquees and permanent buildings, and in the church which is the home for a now-legendary Sunday morning Gospel session and a plethora of a cappella singing in its natural habitat.
The whole area of the festival is slightly smaller than that of the National at Exhibition Park in Canberra, making for a relaxed, spacious environment that never seems overcrowded even with peak crowds of around 5000 people.
The festival is now established as a major event on the WA cultural calendar with a devoted audience base, a strong pool of volunteers, and a remarkably stable organising committee led by president Carole Winfield. Its reputation has spread to the point where each year it receives well over 500 applications from acts wanting to play, many of them from interstate. It has stayed true to the original vision of catering to a family audience, and presents probably the largest children’s program, in proportion to the festival as a whole, of any such event in the country.
The success of the festival is an inspiring example of what can be done from the grass roots, at the far-off, sparsely populated end of the country, by a small group of people dedicated to the love of folk music and community events.
Reviews from 2011
“Over the course of its history the Fairbridge Festival has evolved into the perfect contradiction: passionately embraced by people who feel the festival is their little secret, yet welcoming many thousands of devotees each year. And, with the organisers having invested much in improving on-ground logistics, WA’s best guarded secret has truly become one of the state’s greatest – and most pleasant – events.” ~ XPress Magazine
“If the festival’s biggest acts don’t look like much of a draw on paper, the reality is that the choice of performers is almost incidental at Fairbridge; the unique atmosphere of the festival is what people come for.” ~ DRUM Media
Further information
Phoebe Corke
Email: phoebe@corke.org
Mobile: 0407 606 696