About Us
FolkeFest is a project from Moving Being C.I.C.
Moving Being C.I.C. creates and connects communities through arts, heritage and nature projects.
FolkeFest is a contemporary folk festival set in Folkestone's thriving Creative Quarter. Accessible, multi-cultural, vibrant, dynamic, inclusive.
Coming soon - FolkeClub, a regular music night which moves between different venues in the town and district.
Folk music was first created by the people for the people, world over - anybody could participate. It arose from working on the land, from cultural beliefs and customs, the changing seasons; a sharing and a togetherness which embraces roots and expresses values – these are ever-changing and provide exciting ways in for diverse audiences.
FolkeFest helps revitalise folk music. We promote community, local shared identities and connections. We embrace and celebrate the natural world. FolkeFest builds on folk music’s great traditions of politics, folklore, myths, legends and word of mouth, but with a modern twist.
Our golden threads are:
1. Time and a Place – acknowledging traditions in folk music and updating them
2. Queer-ass Folke - queering folk music and taking it out of its current confines
3. Folkesong – shanties and group songs
4. Word Of Mouth – tales, stories, poems
5. Woke Folk – talks, questions and discussions
6. Folk:Us – visual folk arts and community folk arts
7. EartHeart – connecting with nature
The FolkeFest Team
Didier Rochard
Didier is an arts producer, project manager, artist and curator based in the Creative Quarter. He has been involved in the promotion of live music for 20 years, most notably as Founding Co-Director of London Contemporary Voices (LCV) with artist Anil Sebastian. He has been involved in projects at most major venues in London, including the Royal Albert Hall, O2 Arena and Barbican Hall, and has curated concerts at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Union Chapel, St John-at-Hackney, Oval Space and more. Under his leadership, LCV has featured on three top-ten UK albums and a Grammy-nominated soundtrack. The choir worked with hundreds of artists, including 22 Grammy nominees. Since 2019, Didier has worked as Cultural Heritage Officer for the Fifth Continent Landscape Partnership Scheme based on Romney Marsh outside Folkestone. He previously co-directed Folkestone Pride Town-wide Arts Festival and is currently working on a local Queer Film Heritage Project with University of Brighton. He also worked with the Charles Wood Festival Of Music in Northern Ireland, with Custom FoodLab’s Locavore Growing Project, and on several arts and heritage projects on Romney Marsh with the 14 medieval churches there. Didier has a background in the university research sector, having previously worked for the Arts & Humanities Research Council and for several universities. A lifelong follower of folk music, Didier is also an artist, songwriter and arranger.
Sarah Rennix
Belfast-born Sarah studied music at Durham University and is a passionate singer, arts producer and education specialist. Sarah has managed the education programmes for a number of high profile professional ensembles, delivering community music projects in a range of settings from the BBC Proms to maximum security prisons. In her spare time she enjoys a chilly morning dip in the English Channel and is finally learning what all the buttons on her camera do.
Greg Ireland
Greg Ireland is a folk composer, songwriter and sound artist currently exploring the relationship between sound, space and social history. As a keen folklorist and local history enthusiast, he creates contemporary music and soundscapes that investigates the relationships between people, the land and their histories and stories. Greg founded folk band Green Diesel who are well known on the Kentish folk circuit. In 2021 he was commissioned to compose for choir and strings, to create new music based on the landscape, heritage and folklore of Romney Marsh, as part of the Fifth Continent Landscape Partnership Scheme, supported by the Leche Trust, Michael Tippett Musical Foundation and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Louise Webb
Louise Webb is a Dover-based artist, researcher, and curator who has worked throughout Kent, the UK and has shown internationally. Louise has recently been researching the importance of listening spaces in communities. In her artist practice she has been investigating the intimacy of electronic devices and digital hospitality observing how new social histories and fictional realities are being created through shared technologies.
Louise’s research practice is currently focused on art community networks, social anthropology, contemporary folklore, social myth, digital anthropology, public spaces, listening spaces, administration of the arts, AI and working ethics.
Ethan Sheppard
Ethan Sheppard is a Folkestone-based artist and independent curator who is well known for his local exhibitions. Ethan has a significant online following for his queer work and has exhibited for Folkestone Pride and as part of Margate Pride’s takeover of the Turner Contemporary in 2021. Last year he was The Woodshed Gallery’s Emerging Artist 2021, supported by SECCADS.
Helen Davison
Helen Davison’s practice occupies the moments where communication fails. By exploring live vocal sounds in conjunction with materials and in response to sites of architectural, ecological and socio-historic interest, they seek to share experiences of the queer(ed) body. They use the palpability of the voice and resonances of the body to find moments of connection outside of their self, with a desire to reach cathartic transformation by yielding to chaos and entanglement to find agency. Helen has presented work nationally and internationally and is a founding member of SITE (2018 - present): an initiative inviting performance artists to collaborate on site specific performances and actions. They are also an independent curator and currently Chair of Folkestone Pride.
Volunteer with us
There are numerous ways to get involved with FolkeFest.