Our unique stage really was a case of small beginnings as you can see in the pictures, and has gone from a barn sized rustic construction made from locally sourced wood, to the far more professional, but still unique, stage of today. Originally we were going to have a stage made  of scaffold, however we found out just seven days before our first festival, that the company were unable to provide the staging after all, due to unforeseen circumstances.

Nick quickly decided we could make our own stage, and with a lot of help from family and friends the construction began. Thanks to our neighbour Fred we got some wood from Chris at our local saw mill. He was amazing and pulled out all the stops to get the materials to us, and in just four days our rustic barn/stage was complete.
Good for all of us and good for the environment too.

The majority of you already know, and maybe were even here, back in 2012 when we held our first festival here on the farm.  It was an intimate event with around one hundred attendees, but it sowed the seed very nicely for the New Forest Folk Festival to grow and develop into the festival you know today.

The New Forest Folk Festival is family run and often described as the friendliest of festivals. Nick, Helen and Keith work hard the year round, both in the office and on the land, to ensure everything is in place and organised in good time for the first Wednesday of July each year. Jo and Jon (Nick & Helen’s daughter and son in law) are an essential part of the team too as they run the bar. Throughout the year they ensure stock and staff are both in good supply for your drinking pleasure.

They also work on the land, time permitting, and Jon has brought the pond back to life over the past few years. It is out of bounds for the duration of the festival, for safety reasons, but it can be seen as you stroll down towards the Fringe.

Helen prepares and runs the popular Wednesday evening BBQ, and can be seen smiling every morning with her trusty team, at the very welcomed breakfast bar, or Chicken Coop as it’s more affectionately known.

Back in the day, Helen used to cook all the festival food herself. She loved doing it, everyone loved eating it, and it gave our festival a real homey feel, but as we’ve expanded, inevitably it became too much of a task to feed two thousand hungry festival goers each year.

Keith and his wife Ann plan and order all the merchandise, and during the festival their family Adriena, James, Amy and Alice all join forces to run the merch tent and sell their wares.

Keith is also in charge of our website https://www.newforestfolkfestival.co.uk, and produces the festival programme. He can be seen bombing around the site on his electric bike during the festival taking photographs of anyone and everyone.

Further improvements to date include:

   In 2019 we successfully applied for a grant which allowed us to provide power to all parts of the festival via the National Grid, and we are possibly the only UK grass roots festival entirely powered in this way. We like to think we are trail blazers and consider ourselves very fortunate.

   We were able to put in roadways to connect all aspects of the site, and in order to keep rainwater flowing, we laid land drains, all of which helped create the perfect site for a festival.

   Mains water was installed for everyone’s benefit, as well as an internal fibre network to keep the festival data flowing.....especially important when you are all arriving and need to have your tickets scanned.

   The structure of the stage was extended and Front of House was
created and erected. Unsurprisingly it is so much better than the breezy gazebo we originally used back in 2012!

  We also purchased two shower blocks, which was something we’d been trying to do for some time. They were very well received.

In conclusion, we hope you can see how the festival and site have evolved over the years. We are in the enviable position of owning the farm, festival, goods and chattels, and have been investing in the infrastructure since its inception. Powells Farm is our home, and for five days every July, it is your home too, and we believe that’s just how it feels to you all, so wipe your feet, and come on in!

We also have the best team of volunteers who return each year, willingly giving up their precious time, to help us prepare and run the festival in so many different ways. We must also mention our security and medical teams of course, all of whom work tirelessly to keep everything safe and secure from a plaster for a grazed knee to continual monitoring of the site for your peace of mind.

This is also true of the land, which has been farmed by the Curtis’s through six generations, and we are delighted and privileged to be in a position to invite you all in, and make our farmland  your home for the five days of the festival. Whether you are camping, vanning, or caravanning you will have grass underfoot, and be surrounded by nature in the form of trees, woodland, streams, birds and even wildlife if you’re lucky.

Our Dad was a real lover of nature, and we have not swayed from that path at all. Even our cattle were born on the farm!

There are pictures of dad working in the arena field many years ago. We made hay when the only bit of machinery was the bailer and a bale sledge (if we were lucky) with all the lifting done by hand.  The fields have clay subsoil, so through the summer it dries out giving us a very good site if the dreaded weather should turn against us.

The land is also fairly flat making it accessible to most festival goers. The only slope is in the Arena where the bar is at the top, and the remaining land slopes gently down towards the stage at the bottom.

We couldn’t survive without our wonderful sponsors and technical team, the majority of whom have been with us since the early days and we are so grateful for their continued support and hard work.

There have been many adjustments made to the farm and festival over the years, all working towards making both the best we possibly can. However, there was a time shortly after our Dad passed away when the land was not kept in good condition. Unfortunately, running full time businesses inevitably meant the farm took a temporary back seat, but following that first festival, Nick took the time, along with friends and family, to work hard at bringing the farm back to life.  







The Woodland Fringe, which was originally so densely overgrown you couldn’t see through it, and on the opposite side of the river, which had to be liberated, a third of the field was also grown in.

Once achieved, we were able to tailor the site to the needs of the festival, and have continued to do this each year since. An example was updating Dads old bridge in 2013, after which we raised the concrete bridge by one metre and with much help from Ace Liftaway, the current roadway was installed to enable cars and vans to drive safely towards the camping fields