Event Report
1 Town, 11 Venues, 45 events, 250+ Performers, 25+ Stewards promoting local, regional, national and international folk music.
A wonderful day and evening, packed full of music, song, dance, talks and storytelling took place across the town of Stowmarket on Saturday 21st September thanks to a huge number of individuals and groups.
Working on the event since October 2023, we were grateful to have Voluntary Artistic Director, Alan Bearman and a fantastic TMD Team of 14 people who were responsible for bringing a full, varied and FREE day programme to the town and a selection of FREE and ticketed events in the evening.
Successful funding applications from Mid Suffolk District Council’s Community Development Fund, locality budgets from Mid Suffolk District Councillors covering the Stowmarket Area and Stowmarket Town Council, enabled the day to go ahead free of charge to all visitors. Support from the various venues across the town enabled us to achieve such a wide and varied programme and we were delighted with the involvement of the local business and voluntary communities who supported the event leading up to the event and on the day.
Visit our TMD TEAM page for more details of contributors to the day which includes TMD members and local involvement all of which played a crucial part into bringing the town to life. Our TMD News Page also gives more information about additional support.
Our Project, Stowmarket on Show, which formed part of our Community Development project focused on the local community. We shared our local music traditions but alongside this gave the opportunity to local singing groups to share details of their organisations. Whilst working on programming some local singing groups to showcase at Traditional Music Day, it soon became clear that as a town, Stowmarket has a wealth of singing groups on offer – daytimes and evenings. We also know it’s so very good for our mental health. It is highly likely that there will be a group suitable to your own singing style!
The local businesses and organisations in Stowmarket also did not fail to impress over the year. Our Jig Dolls on Summer Tour (featured on our TMD News Page) showcased a wide selection of the town’s businesses – most being independent businesses – and we were grateful to everyone who agreed to be involved in this publicity campaign.
During the day, we were joined by three wonderful Storytellers, all from East Anglia. Our lead Storyteller was John Row who has travelled the world telling stories. He was joined by two other talented and popular storytellers – Dave Tonge and Chris Richardson who were representing the East Anglian Storytelling Festival – who’s home is also based in Stowmarket. As the three tellers went around popping up across the town’s venues telling tales, they also shared news about their new Storytelling Club which will be coming to Stowmarket soon.
Follow this QR code/link above to keep in touch with the plans.
Musicians, storytellers and dancers were in the main sourced from East Anglia – showcasing the very best of professional and amateur traditional and folk artists in our region. There were also a handful of artists involved who were invited from further afield – Ellen Mitchell (from Scotland) and Bill Murray (from Devon) being our furthest travelling artists.
On a national level, the event featured on the Classic Folk Show – a weekly, 2 hour radio show presented by Mike Norris (a great supporter of EATMT ) on behalf of the English Folk Song and Dance Society (EFDSS) and we were delighted to welcome sound recordist Jowan Collier who spent the day and evening recording various events for the British Library with the plan to add these wonderful traditions to the libraries archives.
But this event went even further afield than England and Britain…
The event was promoted across Europe because it fell the weekend before European Folk Day and Volunteer Stewards were also drawn from a local, regional, national and international pool! Of note, Shez Wright from Australia and Lou Hayden from Canada.
We are grateful to Bethany Last who has been working as a community liaison officer as part of the Community Development Fund promoting this event locally across our social media platforms and who is also in the process of creating a Traditional Music Day 2024 playlist on our EATMT YouTube channel which features MP3s, photos and video – many of which have been shared by our visitors to Stowmarket for the day.
Team TMD meet again at the end of October to evaluate, take stock and then plan for September 2025. Watch this space!