Well, I think the post Shetland Folk Festival Blues have now just about disappeared and I'm able to write a peerie blog about how it all went.
The 28th Shetland Folk Festival has to be one of the smoothest run events yet and the organising committee have been getting plenty of plaudits for the first class and varied line up of visiting artistes. Thanks to all visiting acts for making the 28th Shetland Folk Festival an extremely difficult line up to beat in future years!!! And of course the local artistes - they just seem to get better and better. You do Shetland proud and we thank you greatly for your huge contribution to the success of the overall event. This year, the organising committee made the decision to have no visiting comperes and instead decided that we would do the introductions amongst ourselves. The overwhelming consensus is that this was a worthwhile experiment and it went down a treat with audiences. PHEW!
There have been quite a few write ups about the Festival. The Shetland Times newspaper did a brilliant write up and their articles on various concerts throughout the Festival can be found on the special features page of their online paper
http://www.shetlandtoday.co.uk/shetlandtimes/contentmonthly.asp?CategoryID=27
Thanks also to Sue Wilson for her great write up in the Scotsman and to Lieve for the fanstastic photos that went with it (which sadly aren't on the online version posted below.....but they were awesome!)
http://living.scotsman.com/features/Fishers-of-folk.4055291.jp
Thanks to Lieve for providing the Festival Committee with FANTASTIC images of the 28th annual event. You can already find some of these photos on this myspace site and her own one. I hope that this will not be your one and only Shetland Folk Festival experience?! Hmmm I have a funny feeling you might be hooked though......Thanks also to all the local photographers for their contributions - especially to Billy, Craig and Dale for your displays at the Festival Club. They looked brilliant.
With the Shetland Folk Festival, there are SOOOOOOO many people that need to be thanked because without them - there would be no Festival. I honestly think that what makes this event so special is that it is a 100% voluntary run affair and it involves the whole community.
Thanks to all the accommodation hosts who keep the visiting artistes in their homes for the duration of the event, thanks to all our financial sponsors and to our many and varied volunteers (raffle sellers, Club stewards, merchandise folks, the transport gang, the Lerwick Boating Club who organise the bar and to Sonny for making sure we had some Real Ale too, and to the Rugby Club who do the late night shift at the Club). Thanks to Islesburgh and all their staff for making the Festival Club so brilliant. Thanks to all the community halls and all their volunteers for use of their venue and for feeding the artistes. Thanks also to the Clickimin, Lerwick British Legion and the Shetland Hotel for being so accommodating to our events too. A special thanks to all the PA and lighting crew at all our concerts and venues - you did a wonderful job. And to Alan too for being the ever welcoming party host!
Most importantly though, thanks to those that continue to support the Festival through purchasing tickets and memberships (and raffle tickets!!). Like previous years, the 28th Shetland Folk Festival was a virtual sell out and our thanks goes to you all for being such fantastic audiences.
I'm sure there are plenty of others that deserve thanks but I'm already getting too emotional writing this so I'll stop here. The dates for the 29th Shetland Folk Festival will be 30th April to 3rd May. Yippee - let's start counting the days.
Smoorikans tae you aa!
Da Committee x