FORMER artistic director Dave O’Neill and former staff member Jo Creswell have taken control as co-artistic directors for the next National Folk Festival, which runs run over the Easter long weekend in 2023.

O’Neill is a virtuoso guitarist and fiddler who has been a professional musician and teacher for more than 35 years and who works as a music teacher out of his riverside studio in Queanbeyan. He has played with many Australian artists including Jimmy Barnes, Eric Bogle, The Bushwackers, Fred Smith and Enda Kenny, and has toured and recorded overseas with artists in America and Europe.

Cresswell directs the Celtic Arts Agency, walking/music/singing trips in France and directs the Charlotte Pass Celtic Music Camp with Dave O’Neill, also co-hosting residential singing events. She worked with the Folk Festival office in the early days of its establishment in various artistic roles.

There are been many movements at the station this year, with the sotto voce departure, shortly after the Easter festival, of previous artistic director Katie Noonan and after that of managing director, Lynne O’Brien, who remains on the board of directors, but the festival has been notably quiet about its plans.

The previous chair of the festival board, Stephen Gallagher, moved to NZ and has been replaced with long-standing festival volunteer and stalwart of the folk community David Gilks.

They are now working on the program, which should be finalised in the next week, with a small team of staff, including current managing director Suzanne Hannema, who joined the organisation two months ago.

In July 2021 the festival had received $900,000 from the federal government’s “Rise“ funding, set up for organisations severely impacted by covid, to be used over two festivals, meaning that half of this is still to be expended, but one festival insider said this was only a fraction of what would be needed to deliver the event.

The festival was not among the 29 Canberra arts and cultural organisations and arts centres recently funded through the new ACT Arts Organisation Investment Program.

2023 National Folk Festival, April 6-10.