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Homegrown + English Folk Expo

Venue: Various
Town: Bury
Date: 16-18/10/14
Website: http://themet.biz/homegrown/

Although the Summer festival season has ended, there's always one more event on the calendar to which folk fans can look forward. And what an event the Homegrown weekend has started to become. The event is now in its third year and an already stellar bill continues to get better and better, with The Met attracting an established audience from the local area and beyond with a varied programme across three venues in the centre of town, often leaving the public spoilt for choice and reflecting the very best in English folk music. Thirteen different shows utilising the 2 performance spaces in The Met itself, plus the larger capacity Drill Hall and the recently opened Clarence pub, a staggering total of thirty acts scheduled for public performances across the Thursday and Friday evenings plus a full day on Saturday.

Hand in hand with the musical events is the English Folk Expo music industry gathering, which allows The Met and the musical performances across town to showcase the best and exciting new talents of the genre which go some way to spreading the word on what English music has to offer. Whilst being offered the full programme of events which make up the Homegrown part of the weekend, the delegates who attend the English Folk Expo can add a whole host of their own events which make the most of marketing the artists and the music. The main mover behind English Folk Expo is Terry O'Brien of Playpen Music Management & Agency who took some time at the end of the festival to chat about her tireless work to promote traditional English music - more of that can be found here.

Thursday Friday Saturday Interview Gallery

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LIFTING THE LID ON ENGLISH FOLK EXPO
(or 'Selling England By The Pound')

"I spend a lot of time going to other conferences, meeting people and making links and have gone to a lot of these over the last 10/15 years so a lot of these people I do know anyway, but it's primarily me sat on a phone talking to people and following up leads that I've made at other conferences and trying to identify people who have got the budget and who are programming and also have a capacity to programme English music. So it's one by one across the year."

In trying to clarify what is expected from the delegates over the event, it seems to be the idea that the people who are invited then pick up artists and book them for their own events."I know they are doing that. Within 10 minutes of this events starting one of our artists got a booking in Canada. That's how it happens. There's a lot of information goes out to delegates beforehand and the way we invite them we make it very clear that we want them to do business and they come ready to do it. It's amazing - all across the weekend, you'll be walking around the bar and you can hear people talking about gigs. A couple of the delegates linked up this year; we had someone from the Netherlands who works for several venues across there and someone who works for Radio Bremen in Germany and they met each other and they are probably going to cover 4 artists between them and get a little mini tour across Northern Europe."

It's not just about the bands who are showcased at English Folk Expo, but there are many many non showcase acts who can benefit through the work of their agents and managers who attend English Folk Expo.

"Last year we did a big survey after the event and asked the delegates what they booked and which artists they liked and what they might book in the future but that also included artists of the agents they talked to about the artists that weren't here and when you add all that together you come up with some pretty impressive figures. Last year we had about 100 delegates and including the showcase artists and the non showcase artists, it was reckoned that over the next 2 years, from that one event, there was going to be a spend of over a million pounds on artists and transport and visas and all the rest when you added it all up which is astonishing."

The demand for bands to play at Homegrown is quite large bearing in mind with the prestige of playing there and the opportunities which may arise from impressing English Folk Expo delegates.

"Yes! There's extreme competition! Which is the way we like it. We want them to be fighting for these places. It's been a bit of a journey explaining to the artists what this is and why it's basically an absolute gift to them. It's way beyond just a gig. Maybe last year a lot of the artists didn't understand what we were doing behind the scenes. We had a beautiful little band called 4Square whose only gig last year was 20 minutes in a late night gig in the bar and they ended up being booked by Sunfest in Ontario and that would not have happened if we hadn't done this event. Over the last year the penny has dropped with a lot of the artists about what this can really do for them. We also did an artist's day in July for the showcasing artists to help them prepare for the event and understand it. It was a lovely thing and as the day went on as we brought loads of experts in to explain to them how promoters gig and how you negotiate, what print to bring to the event and how to deal with different networking opportunities - it was amazing to see the look in their eyes and the realisation of 'ah, that's what happens!' The ones who attended that artist's day really did prepare; they were sending out emails to delegates in advance and those are the artists who will pick up more as they knew how to use the event."

While all the preparation in terms of the English Folk Expo delegation is concerned, looking simply at the musical side from The Met's point of view, they are very experienced in putting on folk music from England and beyond.

"Yes. David is the programmer for Homegrown. Programming is not my skill and that's left to David who has done it very successfully already at The Met, but he also gets involved in a few private showcase events that we have and we did have Fellside Recordings doing a label showcase as well where they chose the artists but we guided them towards artists towards who we thought would be exportable. We do have a huge delegation here from the UK as well, particular from England because keeping the artists touring in England is also important and not being ignored."

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