ABOUT US

Continuing with two gigs a week throughout 2009 at Centre Stage, possibly England's best folk venue, Bournemouth Folk Club is one of the most ambitious folk clubs in the South. The old-fashioned title 'folk club' belies the reality of a vibrant young folk scene of acoustic songwriters and folk-influenced instrumentalists. Bournemouth Folk Club also presents top national names from the UK folk scene and monthly acoustic blues and bluegrass gigs.

Bournemouth Folk Club is run by FAWM - (folk and acoustic world music). This is a not-for-profit organisation which aims to bring the best of folk music and a wide range of roots music to Bournemouth.

Bournemouth Folk Club has been directly associated with:
- FAWM concerts in East Dorset;
- Club du Monde (world music project); and
- Paul Burke's radio show (Forest Folk) on ForestFM radio.

Officials of the organisation are:
- Paul Burke (organiser) and Catherine Burke (assistant);
- Val Munro (tickets and admin); and Sheila Burke (assistant).

Thursday night's gigs are funded separately as Club du Monde. It is another not-for-profit collaboration between Soundstrorm (local council arts development), Funnybone Ltd (Centre Stage proprietors) and FAWM (Bournemouth Folk Club). The main objective of Club du Monde is to promote world music gigs.

As these gigs have required public funding to subsidise losses, we branched out to put together a multi-genre programme of roots music gigs (blues, Americana, some less costly world music gigs and other 'fringe folk' events) which are self-funding. This gives Club du Monde the possibility of building up a strong and sustainable programme of varied roots music

Paul Burke (below in action with Djambo)
manages the above programmes.