Richmond Folk Festival 2015 by the numbers
This year’s Folk Fest—with its optimal weather and supercool headliner—sure did break some records!
Photo by: Heaton Johnson V
Folk Festival attendance, in thousands, 2005-2015
The 11th year just wrapped–or the eighth year, depending on how you look at it. The Folk Fest began as just the National Folk Fest, which is a weird thing to say, but it means that we used to host the national version, and then we began ours as sort of an arm of it. You can see from the below graph that We are now back up to our highest point, after a couple of years of poor weather made the numbers drop.
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Number of volunteers, 2006-2015
Highest number of volunteers yet! This is kind of astounding! It’s almost like people think that if they volunteer, they can get in for free! JK, the ENTIRE THING IS FREE! I overheard a lady talking in the doctor’s office waiting room about how she volunteers every year and it is the most fun thing she does, so apparently it is worth your while. More than 1500 people either agree or were forced into donating their time, who can tell?
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Donations collected by the Bucket Brigade, in thousands, 2006-2015
Those volunteers in the Bucket Brigade were happy and cheerful enough (despite possible conscription–see above) to convince you to drop your hard earned cash in the bucket. Who even has cash these days?? It’s impressive that in 2015, the Folk Festival was able to raise close to $120,000 in those buckets. Setting the bar high for next year, that’s our jam.
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Susan Howson
Susan Howson is managing editor for this very website. She writes THE BEST bios.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
How about an article about how the festival is completely inaccessible to those in wheelchairs? Broken elevators, cobblestone, and no wheelchair accessible seating. My four-year old son uses a wheelchair – he loves the banjo and was so excited to hear the music. We had to carry him and his chair up steep stairs as the elevators were broken. This was after we battled across broken cobblestone. When we arrived at the tent, no places were set-up for wheelchair seating… So we sat in the sun outside the tent until the cigarette smoke became too heavy (no smoking inside the tent). We left with a very disappointed boy. Sad thing is, nobody offered to help or make room. Stop with all the cheering and accept the fact that RVA can do so much better….