Welcome to Loughborough Folk Festival 2008!

Ticket Availabilty: Update

As of Monday 25 February, weekend tickets have sold out. Saturday day tickets have also sold out.

There is still some availability on Friday night, Sunday, and for Festival Dance and Song tickets. FDS tickets allow entry into all events except mainstage concerts. This includes ceilidhs, Loughborough Traditions concerts, workshops, and all of the concerts in the Victoria Room.

Arts Council England renews support for Raising the Roots

We are absolutely delighted to announce that Arts Council England East Midlands yesterday approved our funding for the next phase of Raising the Roots, our year-round folk development project. We once again will be working with local schools and communities on various projects involving folk music, dance, storytelling, puppetry and playground games.

More details on the Raising the Roots page very soon, but in the meantime we'd like to extend a huge Thank You to the Arts Council for its continuing support.

BBC Folk Awards - Loughborough's winners!

The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards took place on 4 February at The Brewery Arts Centre in London. It was a star-studded event, featuring presenters such as Brenda Blethyn, Sean Bean, Steve Harley, Blur's Graham Coxon, The Magic Numbers' Romeo Stoddart, KT Tunstall and Phil Collins! Loughborough Folk Festival was lucky enough to be invited to the awards ceremony, so many thanks to the BBC and Smooth Operations.

We would like to congratulate all of the winners of the BBC Folk Awards 2008, and a special "Well done!" to those who will be featured at the festival:

Martin Simpson - Best Album (Prodigal Son), Best Original Song (Never Any Good)

Julie Fowlis - Folk Singer of the Year

Lau - Best Group

Martin and Eliza Carthy - Best Traditional Track (Cold Haily Rainy Night, from The Imagined Village)

Shirley Collins - The Good Tradition Award

Distil Showcase - winning submissions announced

The winning submissions for the Distil England Showcase 2008 (Loughborough Folk Festival, Saturday 8 March) have been announced.

Distil gives skilled and adventurous traditional musicians the opportunity to work with mentors from other areas of music: contemporary classical, free improvisation jazz or even European traditional music might all come into play. Mentors have included Judith Weir, Dave Heath, and David Bedford; Keith Tippett, Paul Dunmall and Paul Rogers; Finnish master-arranger Timo Alakotila, Mihaly Borbely from Hungary and Southall's Kuljit Bhamra. The result is a rich and diverse range of new work from some of Britain's best traditional musicians.

The Distil England Showcase 2008 received some wonderfully original submissions, and the winning composers are Jo Freya, Laurel Swift, Matt Norman, Karen Tweed, Oli Matthews and Andy May. Congratulations to them all.

A stunning lineup of new material requires a stunning group of musicians to play it, so we're delighted to welcome John Dipper, Rob Harbron, Miranda Rutter, Ian Stephenson, Martin Keates, Paul Sartin, Andy Letcher and Beth Porter as the Distil House Band.

The Distil England Showcase is the first concert on Saturday afternoon in the Victoria Room - what a great way to start your day.

New for 2008
Loughborough traditions: Celebrating The National

As you may know, The National Folk Festival was based for many years just up the road at Sutton Bonnington, and can lay claim to having been the FIRST Loughborough Folk Festival. It was a unique festival, in that it celebrated "the tradition" on an unparallelled level, and is much missed.

This year we have added a new dimension to Loughborough Folk Festival: Loughborough Traditions: Celebrating The National. We have invited guests including Mike Waterson and Louis Killen, Pete Coe, Will Noble, John Cocking, Jeff Wesley, the Orchard family, and Vic and Viv Legg, who will take part in both formal concerts and singarounds throughout the weekend. But we haven't forgotten the younger generation: traditional singers like Jim Causley and The Young Coppers will also be joining us. You'll also notice events, screenings and discussions with the likes of Shirley Collins, Doc Rowe and Brian Dawson - all, we hope you'll agree, in the spirit of the National.

We've even created a special ticket for those of you who want to attend these events, but may not be so interested in big, main stage concerts. The Festival Dance and Song ticket will give you access to all of the Loughborough Traditions events (and more!) at a reduced price. See the Tickets page for details.

PLEASE NOTE: The festival lineup is subject to change, though we will endeavour to inform you of any changes as soon as we receive news of them.