Watching all over the world

The Derby Folk Festival at Home, an online project launched in partnership with Bondholders Derby LIVE and Derby City Council, has had a global reach this year.

Since it went live on 2nd October, Derby Folk Festival at Home's four specially-recorded three-hour concerts have been watched by viewers all over the world, from the USA and Canada, to Ireland, Denmark and Australia.

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Some concerts were recorded under socially distanced conditions at the Guildhall Theatre Clubrooms in Derby, while others were recorded by performers at home. As well as being viewed all over the world, they have been seen the length and breadth of Britain, from the Western Isles of Scotland to Cornwall, from Edinburgh to Kent, and everywhere in between.

The fringe events which accompany the festival took the form of videos and posts on Derby Folk Festival’s Facebook page. Around 200 artists including musicians, dancers and poets were featured across more than 75 posts, creating 11 hours of free footage. The posts had a combined reach of over 50,000 over the weekend, with an engaged audience of 3,873 on Facebook across the three festival days.

Derby Folk Festival traditionally ends with an impromptu performance of Rolling Home by a group of the festival team and friends as the last act finishes, and the audience leaves. This year the last Facebook video was a specially-filmed performance of the song, with social distancing, in the arches beneath the Guildhall Theatre.

Councillor Robin Wood, Derby City Council’s Cabinet Member for Culture, Leisure and Tourism said: “The power of music to unite people, even when we can’t get together in person, is always impressive and even more so with Derby Folk Festival at Home being so warmly received all over the world. Well done to everybody involved in keeping the spirit of the festival alive this year; we can only hope that it will come Rolling Home to Derby in 2021.”