Bungay Folk festival prepares for its second year with a plethora of name artists, concerts and free events.
Building on the success of its inaugural year, BFF2025 is in the traps and ready for the starters gun. The festival, which takes over the town of Bungay for the weekend of 5th-7th September is following the same pattern as their inaugural year. A wealth of free music and dancing will be on offer throughout the daytime with a plethora of exciting workshops to tempt the musically minded.
Evening concert wise Eliza Carthy tops the bill this year on the Saturday night as well as a concert by Sound Tradition, while other notable notable folk acts Mishra, and Chris Cleverley are on the Friday night, and Orchestra of Samples, and Tamsin Elliott and Tarek Elazhary, round up the weekend on the Sunday. Local acts always feature prominently and the festival is delighted to welcome back The Castle Singers with a newly composed work by William Drew-Batty alongside other singing delights in the form of the Waveney SHE choir and Heartbeat.
The festival has more than 50 different acts on offer with most playing for free including The Larks, Homity, Tangled up in Bob, John Ward, Alden and Patterson, Clark and Zuppardi, Wendsum, The King Driscolls, Rattlebox and Will Fergusson to name but 10 in a wide variety of venues. As well as local venue The Fisher Theatre, and both the St Mary’s and Holy Trinity churches The Bell Gallery, Number 28, The Community centre, The Riverside centre, 3 Tuns public house and the town library will be playing host to wide range of music and dance.
The festival is supported this year by Suffolk County Council, East Suffolk Council, BEBA and Bungay Town Council. As a result they are able to offer a number of free workshops such as yoga, African drumming, Balkan dance, singing the season, have a go melodeon or concertina and a family ceilidh. Other paid workshops will include learning to play the Flute, Guitar, and Bodhran, through to Harp, Hurdy Gurdy, Mandolin.
Dance wise there will be Ceilidh’s as well as displays of Morris and Eastern dancing around the town. There will also be a Folk Picnic at the Castle bailey with free live music stage from 11am to 5pm on Sunday 7th September.
The Fisher Theatre is the place to start and to pick up a festival programme. The rest is up to you! Festival parking this year is at Outney Common.
To find out more about the weekend go to www.bungayfolkfestival.co.uk
