Woodfordia’s 500 Year Plan

We recognise, appreciate and graciously receive gifts from our ancestors.
We understand these are the gifts of lore and the celebration of our existence.
We aim to gift future generations a clean slate; an organisation unencumbered with financial, social or environmental debt.
We’ll cultivate a convention of decision-making, strengthening through time, that will resonate in our work and nurture our future. We’ll plant a forest of goodwill and benefit from its shade. We will build with the eyes of artists.
We’ll provide space for our descendants to meet the challenges of their generations with vigour, courage and imagination and encourage them to celebrate their journeys with levity and frivolity.
The 500 year plan lives in our minds. It is our myth. It is a vision for how we might be and sensed by all who feel our welcome.

Our Organisation

Back in 1987 when we held our first folk festival in Maleny, we captured an ethos. We felt the expressions of our cultures could be deeper than the shallowness that our nation’s celebrations and festivals portrayed.

As organisers, we really didn’t know what we were doing but took risks and went exploring, at times with both feet in the dark. It felt like we were chipping away at a rough piece of granite in search of the beautiful sculpture that existed within.

We’ve tried to define our work not by what we can’t do and whom we excluded, but rather what we could do and whom we could embrace. We couldn’t cherry pick our humanity. To explore our celebrations and express that humanity would require kindness and tolerance, and the first exercise in this task was to apply that kind of compassion to ourselves.

Along the way, we learned to rely on our fellow organisers’ strengths. We discovered that our weaknesses could become assets, because they were an opportunity to seek advice, to involve and empower people beside us. Our talented artists and knowledge-seeking presenters became collaborators. Along the way, you, our wonderful patrons and volunteers, became allies. And now, we’re all chipping away at that piece of granite. It feels powerful; everyone in the same boat rowing in the same direction.

We consider our festivals a gift and all who join us owners. Our shared ethos creates experiences that become an organic factory for making lives more worth living. The prize is not just a pretty place, but a cooperative state of joyous, mindful being.

It’s on behalf of the organisers, old and new, our committee and staff, artists and presenters, the wonderful volunteers, the merchants, the cooks, the sponsors and contractors – contributors all, that our beautiful festivals continue into the future 33 years later. Bring your sculpting tools and join us. Let’s make magic together.

Our Objectives

Woodfordia is a not-for-profit, community driven organisation with our 500-acre headquarters at Woodfordia, approximately five minutes drive from Woodford in SE Queensland, Australia. Our passionate pursuits include producing the Woodford Folk Festival, The Planting, Festival of Small Halls and Woodfordia’s Artisan Camp. Woodfordia’s mission statement is to stimulate, facilitate and foster the preservation and promotion of folk culture for the common good.

The objectives of Woodfordia is:

1. Act as a coordinating body for folk activities in the State of Queensland.
2. Encourage participation in the artistic expression of our times through the folk idiom.
3. Assist in the passing down of skills and the acquisition of skills loyal to the spirit of folk tradition.
4. Promote interest in folk performance, studies, collection and dissemination with particular reference to Australian tradition and to the State of Queensland.
5. Implement and maintain any projects such as festivals, concerts folk clubs, folk centre, libraries workshops etc. that will assist these objects.
6. Provide the necessary communicative and informative devices that can be used to achieve these objects.
7. Represent membership in any forum that effects these objects. Co-operate and assist any other organisation, groups or individuals with similar objects.

Committee Members & Staff

STAFF
Amanda Jackes – Managing Director and Co-Founder
Annah Evington – Media Manager
Ben Sirl – Small Businesses Manager
Bill Hauritz – Founder
Brian Maudsley – Workshop Supervisor
Chris Shervey – Site Manager
Courtney Wild – Programme Manager
Eileen O’Shea – Chief Financial Officer
Esther Dougherty – Festival of Small Halls Programme Administrator
Ethan Coleman – Farm Hand and Plant Operator
Ingrid Hauritz – Senior Finance Officer
Isobel Bartlett – Festival of Small Halls Producer
Karen McBride – Citizenship, Volunteers & Department Heads Manager
Linda Silburn – Business Development and Communications Manager
Paul Grant – Vegetation Supervisor
Peter Monley – Property Manager
Samantha Brown – Front of House Manager
Sarah King – Programme Administrator
Tony Kynn – Digital Manager
Venetia Brown – Deputy General Manager

Click here to read Our Constitution