‘The Renewal: A Village Dreams’. Photo: Courtesy of Woodford Folk Festival and Lachlan Douglas.
Woodford Folk Festival is distinct in its event-wide emphasis on ritual, ceremony and lore. Each year, festival-goers attend an Opening Ceremony incorporating a Welcome to Country by the Jinibara Traditional Custodians, participate in a three-minute candlelit silence on New Year’s Eve and then cluster upon a hilltop for a dawn ceremony as the sun emerges on New Year’s Day.
Accordingly, for the 2023-24 event, Woodford Folk Festival took a new approach. Current Closing Ceremony co-Directors Linsey Pollak and Mark Bromilow were invited to create an event that returned to the ritual focus, which first began with inaugural Director Dr Neil Cameron in 1994. Significantly, however, this year the ritual had to take place without fire as its major affective component, with the exception of an Indigenous ceremonial flame at its commencement.
Marisa Georgiou is an artist, writer and social worker who has a history of working in arts and cultural community development, mainly in Meanjin/Brisbane. Their current practice is concerned with how to artfully navigate contemporary oppressions which affect our social and material landscapes. They draw broadly from aesthetic theory, transformative social change, and therapeutic or spiritual modalities. In 2021, they undertook a research placement with the Social Justice and Activist Research Centre at QUT, investigating the aesthetics of capitalist phenomena, immaterial labour and the production structures of the arts industry. They are a founding and current member of the ARI currently known as Brisbane Visual Arts Advocacy (BVAA); an initiative which advocates for an artist-centred industry.
