‘Re-energised’ Sark Folk Festival to make comeback

Thursday 05 July 2018

A quirky festival that sees Sark’s population treble for a weekend of folk-infused tunes has confirmed that it will return in 2019 after a year-long hiatus.

Sark Folk Festival – one of the Channel Island’s best-loved boutique music events – will be back from Friday 5 July to Sunday 7 July.

The Festival was run for seven consecutive years until 2017, when the organisers announced they needed to take a break.

Everyone involved with organising the not-for-profit festival had contributed their time voluntarily, with crowds of more than 2,000 people descending on the small island to enjoy the music and other entertainment spread over three days during the summer. 

Delighted to publicly announce that Sark Folk Festival to return from 5th - 7th July 2019. See link for more https://t.co/CG6nah1Daf #SFF2019

— Sark Folk Festival (@sarkfolkfest) July 4, 2018

Now organisers say they’re ready to do it all over again. In an announcement yesterday, the team commented that they were “incredibly excited, having taken a year off to regroup and re-energise, to bring back folk and roots music to the beautiful island of Sark.”

Changes to roles on the festival’s organising committee were also announced, with founder of the Festival, Simon Harvey, stepping down from his role as Chairman. 

“After his years of dedication, Simon has decided it is the right time to hand on to a successor, although he will still be involved and will remain as a committee member. The committee would like to publicly thank Simon for the sheer volume of work and time he has put in over the past eight years. As a reflection of the huge amount of work Simon put in, two new roles have been made to fill the gap he leaves behind."

Those two roles will be Chairman and Festival Director, covering all of the duties which Mr Harvey had done since he first launched the Festival in 2010.

Pictured: Attendees at a previous edition of the festival. (Sark Folk Festival/Facebook)

The new Chairman will be Josh de Kooker. He will be taking on "overall responsibility for the planning of the festival through the year", while Paul Le Huray will be Festival Director, "responsible for the operation of the festival over the weekend."

The organising committee said: "Josh and Paul have both been heavily involved in previous festivals and bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to their new roles."

The committee acknowledged the huge team effort and community support the Festival has received since 2010 and during it's year-long break, saying they "would like to thank everyone associated with the festival for their continuous and highly valued support."

The Sark Folk Festival sold out every year it was held between 2010 and 2017. In the later years the website crashed, as too many people tried to buy tickets when they initially went on sale, meaning the organisers had to invest in new servers to cope with the increasing demand.

Video: Sark Folk Festival in 2016. (Guernsey Gigs/YouTube)

When the organisers announced prior to the 2017 Festival that they would be taking a break, with no definitive answer of when, or even if, the Sark Folk Festival would return, there were a number of disappointed Festival fans, musicians and other service providers. 

Sark has acknowledged the boost the Sark Folk Festival gave the entire island economy during the week it was held with every camp site, available hotel bed and guest house fully booked months in advance, along with extra sailings selling out and tickets changing hands for the Festival itself for much higher than the original face value at times. 

To replace the Sark Folk Festival, a group of people got together to organise a replacement and the Sark Summer Festival is being held this coming weekend between Friday 6 and Sunday 8 July.

It has been billed as "an eclectic mix of music, from laid-back Reggae to foot-stomping Blues, enchanting Folk to Country swagger." 

Pictured: A poster for the new Sark Summer Festival, which will be held this weekend.

Those attending the Sark Summer Festival have been promised food tents, craft stalls, secret garden yoga, tai chi, choir singing, activities for children and adults alike alongside music and the "fresh air, glorious sunsets, sea views and star-filled night skies" which "are always plentiful on Sark." 

It is not yet clear if the organisers of the Sark Summer Festival are planning to hold their event again in the future.