The 2014 Montana Folk Festival in Butte has been declared a tremendous artistic and economic success by its producers.The festival was a success on every point we use to measure it. This was the biggest, best and most beautiful Montana Folk Festival we have produced yet, Thanks to the coordinated efforts of hundreds of volunteers, we were able to properly greet and entertain a large number of guests this past weekend, including friends and family from throughout the world, The festival was not without complications. A thunderstorm and downpour preempted the last set at the Original Stage on Friday night. That set was added onto the Granite Stage Saturday night to make up for the scratched performance. There were more than a dozen medical calls, mostly heat related. A few last minute schedule changes kept programmers busy when The Dardanelles had flight delays to get to Butte. For example, Sheila Kay Adams, an Appalachian storyteller and National Heritage Fellow broke her foot and was devastated when she was unable to travel to Montana from North Carolina at the last minute. This year we experienced overflow crowds at all venues on Friday and Saturday. The parking lots were full as was every possible parking spot on the Hill. While the crowds were lighter in comparison on Sunday there was still strong attendance at all of the venues on Sunday with good crowds at the smaller stages. In fact on all points -- the ridership on busses on the site, amount of garbage taken off the site that is measured at the landfill, amount of ice used, number of CDs sold, food sales and parking patterns that had cars in parking lots and every empty space on the Hill on Saturday all indicators are that the festival continues to grow to the capacity of the present site design. One thing that became obvious this year is that we need to double the size of the dance floor next year. They want fewer chairs and more room to move.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 09:53:32 +0000
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