FWO is run by Folk Arts Oxford. In addition to running Folk Weekend FAO has run education and special needs projects in the past, as well as fund raising events for the festival. We also run the incredibly useful Folk in Oxford website for all things folk
Partnership with Live To Your Living Room
Live To Your Living Room was born out of the success of Folk Weekend Oxford going online at the start of the COVID lockdown. They have continued to offer high quality folk gigs streamed online since 2020. At the start the musicians were performing from their own homes, but as the world has opened up again many are now streamed from venues as ‘hybrid concerts’. Folk Arts Oxford have been working with LTYLR this year to stream concerts from Oxford which have a in-venue audience, but allow folk lovers from further afield enjoy the events from their homes too. Of course there are plenty of locals who would love to attend a folk concert in the city, but are unable due to disability, anxiety or caring responsibilities. The streamed offer has meant that they can access the concerts as almost as they would in the concert venue.
We have already streamed Chris Wood from the Holywell Music Room, Martin Carthy from the Old Fire Station and Jim Causley from the Quaker Meeting House. In December we were thrilled to be able to offer the Oxfordshire seasonal tradition that is the Magpie Lane Christmas concert to an online audience.
24th March
Hack-Poets Guild – Blackletter Garland
Inspired by historic broadside ballads – daily song sheets sold for pence from the 16th to 20th centuries – the artists rejuvenate and reinvent these stories. Fascinating interpretations and original compositions tell intricate tales of birth, love, conflict and death, with all the imagination of the folklore from which they’re based.
Marry Waterson, Lisa Knapp and Nathaniel Mann lead a five-piece band bringing broadsides vividly to life for a new generation and offering a rare insight into Britain’s history.
Marry Waterson – voice
Lisa Knapp – voice, fiddle, autoharp
Nathaniel Mann – voice, bowed banjo, electronics and meat cleaver
Barney Morse Brown – cello w/ pedals
Laurence Hunt – percussionThree of the UK’s most innovative and prestigious folk artists present Blackletter Garland, a brand new album and live tour.
Produced by Sound UK. Commissioned by Sound UK and OCM.
Funded by Arts Council England and PRS Foundation. Supported by the Bodleian Libraries.
Click here for tickets to online event
31th May
The Young’uns
The Young’uns live shows are renowned. With heart-on-the-sleeve storytelling, beautiful lyrics, warm harmonies and relentless repartee, Sean Cooney, Michael Hughes and David Eagle (the award-winning stand-up comedian) sing life-affirming folk songs for today.
Born from empathy, crafted with care, fired by hope, and shared with joy, The Young’uns’ songs have been described as “a heartfelt secular hymnary for these troubled times and a rallying call for humanity.” (The Scotsman). They have led the band to three BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards (including Best Album in 2018 for Strangers) and the creation of the acclaimed international theatre show The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff (based on their 2019 concept album of the same name).
20 years after accidentally stumbling into the alien world of their local folk club as drunken teenagers (and gaining their cureless name in the process), these three thirty-something friends from Stockton and Hartlepool have never lost the joy of that first night of singing together. Whether performing at Glastonbury Festival, writing a song about pigs with a group of school children or presenting a programme on Radio 4, Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes are just the same.
Taking its name from messages tied to the railings of a bridge in Sunderland, their new album Tiny Notes (Hudson Records) is a collection of songs that find hope and humanity in grief and despair. From London Bridge to Lockerbie, from Derry to Aleppo, with warm harmony and beautifully crafted lyrics, these are folk songs for our times.