The fiddles and mandolins have played their last notes, the tents are packed up and the costumes folded.
The National Folk Festival has finished for another year.
The five-day Easter festival at Exhibition Park featured music, dance and folk arts.
Organisers say it has been one of the most successful years in the festival’s 34-year history, with the nearly 15,000 visitors on Saturday breaking the record for a single day.
While the festival showcases top musicians from around the world, it also prizes participation.
Knots of people gathered for an afternoon jam under a tree or in the corner of the bar late at night.
Visitors were also encouraged to get involved with a series of music, song and dance workshops.
One of the most popular classes was the Appalachian clogging workshop, a Bluegrass variation on line-dancing from the Appalachian mountain towns of Virginia in the United States.
Workshop leader Martha Spencer has brought her Mountain Top Band from Grayson County.
“It’s a traditional dance called flat-footing, kind of a step dance,” she said.
“It’s just a tradition that’s been passed down many generations in our family and it kind of goes hand in hand with the music.”
Time bubble
While some performers travelled from overseas for the festival, many of the acts are local products.
I Viaggiatori, or The Voyagers, hail from Melbourne but their Italian folk music has been handed down through their migrant families since the 1800s.
The group’s lead singer and guitarist, Kavisha Mazella, says the music celebrates Italian immigrant culture.
“We learnt it from our grandparents, our uncles, our aunties,” she said.
“It’s very interesting because this music is really retained by the migrants. When you have a migrant population they retain the culture, and then back in the country of origin it’s often changed or moved on or they’re not so interested.”
“So in Australia you have this time bubble of culture and this is what we’re expressing.”
Looking ahead
Director Sebastian Flynn is already thinking about next year’s festival and how it can be expanded.
“It’s like one of the ACT’s sort of elder children,” he said.
“I think it’s appropriate that it’s seen to be evolving and not becoming dusty as an institution but to actually be catering more broadly for people’s interests and needs.”
He says organisers are considering holding extra events throughout the year or establishing a Folk Museum in Canberra.