Northumberland’s Gathering
Musician Kim Bibby-Wilson is the organiser behind the Morpeth Northumbrian Gathering, a three-day festival celebrating the traditions of Northumberland, which takes place this year from 5-7 April. The Squirrel asked her to explain the importance of the event, its history and its background:
Kim Bibby-Wilson with the Morpeth Gadgy, Alex Swailes MBE, in 2023 (photo by Alison Byard)
What would you say is the importance of the Morpeth Gathering? Can you say something about its history and background?
Where do I start on its importance? The full title is Morpeth Northumbrian Gathering; the strapline is “continuing Northumberland’s traditions” and that is exactly the Gathering’s mission, showcasing the area’s music, dance, crafts, folklore, dialects and customs. UNESCO defines these skills and knowledge, passed on by through the generations as “intangible cultural heritage”, such an important part of people’s diverse lives. We need to remind people or tell them for the first time that Northumberland has a huge and rich heritage including pitmen’s rapper sword dancing, our own ancient bagpipes, and local words and sounds found in our songs and everyday speech that are direct echoes of the Old English language of the Angles. Our sense of place, identity and continuity is celebrated through all the concerts, outdoor events, displays, competitions, storytelling, hands-on workshops encouraging people to spectate, enjoy, learn and participate. In the process we aim to host a really enjoyable three-day programme for all ages in the county town of Morpeth.
The first festival was held in the spring of 1968 by Morpeth Antiquarian Society as a one-day traditional music festival of song, melody and dance, to complement the society’s usual local history lectures and visits. It was run (as it still is) by a standing committee of co-ordinators and representatives of the different activities, with my father chairing the committee as he was at the time the MAS chairman. The whole family became involved, with my mother selling tickets through her woolshop and my brother and me taking part in the musical and admin areas. Over the years the event grew into a three-day tourist attraction held on the weekend after Easter with the addition of craft, dialect, drama, heritage and other artforms and an increasing amount of free outdoor spectacle, thanks to helpful levels of regional arts funding. More recently challenges from funding cuts, risk factors, reduced and in some cases ageing manpower - and of course the interruption of Covid - make it much harder to pull off a full programme of events, though after cancelling the in-person events just before lockdown, we rapidly learned how to produce pre-recorded and live online events during the pandemic. This had the added advantage of reaching appreciative people across the world who had never managed to visit our live festivals.
Last year I was keen to see a clog dancing competition as part of the Gathering, but on the day there were no entrants. The organisers rescued the event by improvising some demonstrations. Do you fear for some of the Gathering's traditions in the future?
Traditions do evolve – for instance, we’ve had a modern mummers’ play with topical references, a rap performance of Chaucer and some digital music in past Gatherings – so we always look for ways to continue elements in a way that appeals to new audiences and increases active take-up. We weren’t sure whether 2023 would see people returning to in-person events after the pandemic break. Like you, we were disappointed, if not alarmed, to find that despite other competitions seemingly unaffected, no clog dance entrants turned up, the first time that had occurred. The stewards and judges who ran the taster clog workshops were keen to explore running regular public workshops for novices of different ages, something we couldn’t manage last year. A recent clog project by Music Partnership North in local schools is making good progress but the youngsters are not yet up to competition standard. Another factor is the small number of clog makers nowadays, with none based in the NE for many years. At the time of writing we are discussing whether to pause the clog competitions until 2025.
It’s true that not everyone enjoys or approves of competition in the arts, but it’s a central aspect of many of the traditional musical festivals in the UK and the progressive nature of novice/intermediate/open classes can act as an incentive. Other areas have lost support or fallen out of fashion over our 56 years – a lack of suitable rams’ horns affected stick dressers, schools are hard-pressed to spare time to encourage skills not in the core curriculum, and we’ve had no junior dialect writers or piano accordionists come forward recently. When it’s practical we’ve run satellite events to encourage participation.
On the other hand, two members of Morpeth Poetry Group, Eileen Beers, and George Robertson, won categories in last year's dialect competitions. Eileen is a long-standing dialect practitioner, but George is a relative newcomer to dialect poetry, although not, of course, to Northumberland. Does this combination of continuity and replenishment, exemplified by Eileen and George, put you in good heart for the future?
It certainly does – we need talented exponents of the skills we highlight along with enthusiastic newcomers of all ages to show audiences what is special about Northumberland’s traditional life. Look at the PR machines of Scotland and Ireland – we need to flag up Northumberland’s uniqueness to get the same level of public understanding of our own distinctive culture. Despite increasing challenges (there’s always scope for more active volunteers as well as support with funding events) we always receive brilliant feedback about the Gathering, with artists asking to come back or bringing forward new ideas, and audiences snapping up tickets for the main concerts (the next fundraiser with a superstar line up including Alistair Anderson, Werca’s Folk and Graham Bell is on 8 March).
Special events at this year’s Gathering include Fairies and Folk Tales plus More Silly Songs. Full details in due course on www.northumbriana.org.uk
Greg Freeman