Wanderfal music festival Falmouth when and what is happening

The two day festival is the brainchild of Will Greenham and Rufus Maurice owners of The Cornish Bank music venue, bar and cafe situated in the old bank building in Church Street.

It is hoped it will eventually match the success of of the Sea Shanty Festival or the Oyster Festival.

It follows along similar lines to the hugely successful Sea Change Festival in Totnes where artists perform at different venues across the town. So far the venues include the bank itself, the Princess Pavilion and Underhand in the Old Brewery Yard with other venues hoping to be announced soon.

The first tranche of bands are due to be announced on Wednesday.

So far the signs have been really good with the early bird tickets selling out and more tickets being released for sale this week.

The Packet went to talk to Rufus to find out what the festival is all about and what people can look forward to.

Rufus Maurice behind the bar at The Cornish Bank

So what's the festival all about?

"You will be going from each venue, when something finishes here you can go along to the next venue, and the Princess Pavilion is going to have two stages so you're not going backwards and forwards. It will be programmed in a way that you'll be able to stop for a rest or get lunch, those sort of things.

But it will be a little mini-tour of Falmouth so there will be opportunities for other businesses to be able to tempt people into their premises. We'll be printing a map of the quickest route and any businesses that are on these routes, if they want to do something they can just let us know and we'll put it on the map.

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That's the idea and, as much as possible, we want to make it affordable, so we've set the ticket price quite low, certainly for the scale of bands we've managed to get. We'll also be doing free events in the day up at Underland and at the Cornish Bank.

Some of the bands that are playing in the evening are playing acoustic sets and workshops and things like that with interactions rather than full on gigs. There'll be other workshops too. We've got lots of craft activities for families and stallholders or makers and artists that want to sell things, again get in touch with us.

Wanderfal will take place in April

Really want the town involved. We proposed the idea, we've got a skeleton structure around it, quite filled in actually, got an awful of of music provided and got structure of security, safety and all the management of it goes, but it'll be nice to leave a bit of space in which Falmouth can offer up its talent and show us what is out there really.

What else can people expect from the festival?

We are getting on for up to 40 bands and talking about getting a couple of buskers stages as well free performers to give youngsters who want to get involved a go but who don't have a full set. So there's talk of one up at the pavilion and we are talking with the town council for a pagoda somewhere in the town. There is some talk of Church Street Park being used.

What we are thinking of this year, as it's the first year, is to keep it controllable just want a really good event. If it's small and really good then it can grow. If it's wishy washy and a bit too big it won't be sustainable.

Is it going to be an annual event?

Yeah, we are determined to make it not just sustainable in terms of it's looking after itself as it is, but to grow it and ensure it's not a sort of cost on the town but an absolute addition to it. We are trying not to go down the Arts Council funded route because we both believe you don't really know where you stand with that, very hard to gauge whether you've been successful or not.

The Cornish Bank

What's the reaction to the event been like?

Unbelievable actually. We were slightly nervous, we were taking a huge gamble booking 30 bands. It isn't a cheap undertaking and you could lose your reputation very quickly if you put on a duff event. We've had a very good reaction from both sides, from bands who really want to come to Falmouth but who haven't really had the excuse to, so they're delighted, and the town council has been very supportive and all our customers seem very excited about it and tickets are selling fast so it seems like it is going to be successful if all goes to plan.

Anyone wanting to be involved do come down to the Cornish Bank and talk to us as we want as much of the town to be involved as possible.

The festival runs over two days on April 8 and 9, early bird tickets sold out very quickly, next round in tier 1 tickets are £25 available through Cornish Bank website at thecornishbank.co.uk or here