From Bournemouth To Butlins

This year we're looking to extend our festival coverage across a wider range of events during year. Whilst we've already missed Celtic Connections, we will be starting our 2011 season very soon with coverage of two festivals in March.

We've covered SXSW before and will hopefully bring you great coverage again this. We're also really excited that we're going to bring you coverage of a brand spanking new festival, Bournemouth Folk Festival.

If you're reading this before the 12th of February, you can still get the early bird discount, for what promises to be a really innovative indoor festival, that will beat any risk of cold and rain when it happens for the first time on 12th of March at the BIC.

The festival is a stunning mix of national and local talent, young guns looking to showcase their talents to a wider audience and more established names, including Fatea Instrumentalist Of The Year, Chris Wood. In addition there's workshops and sessions and if there's some early sun, a chance to dip your toes in the water and get sand on the souls of your feet. See the website, www.bournemouthfolkfestival.co.uk for more details, but it's fair to say this event is going to kick off in some style.

At the other end of the year is the Great British Folk Festival over the weekend of the 2-4th December at Butlins. 2010 saw the debut festival and some rave reviews, despite a snow affected event and 2011 looks like it's going to be just as big and just as bold.

Between the two we're going to bring you coverage of as many events as possible. Check out our tour pages for a number of the events we're recommending and hopefully will be able to bring you reports of.

If you're going to a festival and want to try your hand at writing, get in touch as we're always keen to give coverage to events that keep the music live.

From Bournemouth to Butlins, we reckon 2011 is going to be a great year for music and an extra bank holiday to enjoy it on. RESULT!