How to solve UK's economic problems and build communities! Bampton Folk Festival 2011 (After the Fair), North Devon and its visiting traditional folk music joining-in musicians, singers and dancers entertainment could have the answer!

I'm just back from an excellent weekend at Bampton Folk Festival 2011 (After the Fair) and have been contemplating how events get started and how they grow to become a self sustaining tradition. All of which is prompted by Bampton Folk Festival which just seems to gain popularity each year, despite very little publicity. People seem to hear about it by word of mouth and then keep turning up to enjoy a fantastic weekend of traditional dance, traditional song, traditional tunes and traditional community get-togethers, with lots of audience participation, that turns the small and normally rather quiet North Devon Town of Bampton into a vibrant community of traditional folk music, dance and song.

Of course, at the heart of this free festival, there is a very hard-working committee of folk musician and dance enthusiasts (Pennymoor Singaround) who, over the years have formed relationships with musicians, singers and dancers who are also passionate about folk traditions, from as far afield as Ireland and Brittany, and who arrange each year for these people to come and visit, but the general ethos of the festival is relaxed which enables visiting musicians and dancers to find space to express their musical and dancing skills at the various informal pub sessions and workshops without any great degree of apparent organisation.

In addition to the great sessions and fantastic traditional English, Irish and French (Breton) folk tunes I played with other traditional musicians and singers at the Swan Hotel and Blackberries (restaurant, bar and B&B accommodation), many of my best memories of Bampton Folk Festival (After the Fair) were the hours of conversation I had with other musicians and singers, some well known to me and others newly discovered.

I read somewhere that musicians comprise only 3% of the population with that small percentage including all musical traditions (Rock, Jazz, Classical, Pop etc.). So folk music festivals are a very necessary opportunity for practicing musicians, amateur or professional, to get together and share experiences.

But it was not just the musicians, singers and dancers who were enjoying themselves. Judging from the applause that we got in the Swan Hotel many listeners and watchers were having a great time and that even included youngsters, who may have been more used to modern music but who also joined in with the appreciative and generous clapping.

In these days while there seems to be a constant stream of announcements of economic doom and gloom and every pundit is wondering aloud how to grow the Gross National Product and provide employment, the extra economic activity that has been brought to Bampton over this last festival weekend must stand as a beacon to practical and immediate achievement in improving a local economy.

Indeed, perhaps next year, if every town in the country had a folk festival where people got together in the pubs and halls to dance, sing and play music for a few days, perhaps we could turn our UK economy around at a single stroke.

Not to mention, of course, that lots of people would enjoy themselves, meet each other and generally have a happy, healthy and social time.

Of course there will be the naysayers who will find fault and point out the problems but why can't we in Britain be a can-do society and just get on with it as Pennymoor Singaround demonstrates is possible.

With happy musicians, dancers and singers from places far and wide, happy audiences and significant amounts of money being brought into the town of Bampton North Devon, a lot of people have an interest in Bampton Folk Festival (After the Fair) continuing. So many thanks to Clare Penney and her friends at Pennymoor Singaround for a great festival and I look forward to coming back next year :-) (More photos of Bampton Folk festival 2011)