Wimborne Folk Festival with an international flavour

Wimborne Folk Festival, with an international flavour, takes place throughout Wimborne Minster from 8-10 June, with the Tibetan monks arriving a little earlier to begin creating a fabulous mandala.

Headline performers over the festival weekend include Ange Hardy, The Outside Track, Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar, Josie Duncan & Palbo Lafuente, Ray ‘Chopper’ Cooper, Polly Morris Band, and Tom Lewis. These will be joined by a whole list of others musicians and singers at various venues. You can expect to see Black Sheep, Broken Biscuits, Cider House Ronders, CamillaB, Gugge 2000, Bigfoot, No Direction, Pigs Might Fly, ScuttleShake, The Straw Horses, Tin Angel, Whits Horse Whisperers and Wikkaman and many more.
The Taphouse is set to return with its festival marquee and pop up bar located just behind the Taphouse serving an array of local real ales, craft ciders and more alongside an exciting music line-up.

Owner of the Taphouse and Gin House, Kate Compston says, “We are excited to be back for the fourth year supporting the Folk Festival which is a key event in the annual calendar, raising the profile of the town and bringing everybody together for a weekend of music and fun. We’ve got and amazing line-up this year from some talented musicians across Dorset and the Taphouse Marquee is free admission. We look forward to welcoming everyone over the weekend.”

Minster Green Fair with charity stalls, cakes, biscuits and produce, china and glass, crafts, plants and bric a brac will take place on Saturday 9 June in front of the Minster Church on the green. Proceeds are in aid of charity.

Also on Saturday 9 June is the colourful procession. With an international flavour, there will be country dancers, Morris men, women and children, Irish dancers, belly dancers, cloggies, majorettes, Slovakian dancers and the Tashi Lhunpo Tibetan monks, and more. It will take place between 2.30 and 3.30pm, filling the town with music and joy.

The same evening at Allendale House, Ecotainment! presents A Plastic Ocean: a film that brings to light the consequences of our global lifestyle.

From 6 June, the Tashi Lhunpo Tibetan monks will be creating a mandala of a Buddha’s palace out of millions of grains of coloured sand at Priest’s House Museum and can be seen there daily 6-9 June between 10am to 4.30pm. On Sunday, 10 June, the mandala will be ceremonially destroyed and the monks will undertake a ritual procession between 1pm and 1.30pm from Priest’s House Museum to the River Allen by the library, for scattering of the mandala. If you want to see it before it is ceremonially destroyed, it will be available for viewing at Priest’s House Museum between 12pm and 12.30pm on Sunday.

With all this and more, you can wander through Wimborne, browse stalls, purchase refreshments and enjoy any of the free shows, or buy tickets or wristbands to see the headline acts.