Fairport's Cropredy Convention
| Fairport's Cropredy Convention | |
|---|---|
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| Genre | Folk, Electric folk, Rock, Acoustic, Punk, Reggae |
| Dates | Second weekend in August |
| Location(s) | Cropredy, England |
| Years active | 1976–present |
| Founded by | Fairport Convention |
| Website | |
| Official website | |
Fairport's Cropredy Convention (formerly Cropredy Festival) is an annual festival of folk and rock music held on the edge of the village of Cropredy in Oxfordshire, England. It has taken place in August since 1976.
Fairport's Cropredy Convention attracts up to 20,000 people each year, making it the largest annual festival of its kind in Britain. The festival features a single stage at the lower end of the sloping arena field. There are also ancillary events, such as morris dancing in the streets and live music at the village's two pubs.
The festival began as small private performances to locals by the electric folk band Fairport Convention to about 750 people in a village back garden in July 1976. The next year the performance was repeated and fans allowed to attend. In 1978 it was properly organized and moved to a larger site behind the Cropredy village school. It became a significant event in the band’s history as they played their farewell performance there on 4 August 1979 to around 4,500 fans, who were cheered by a promise to continue with annual reunions. From this point the Festival became the main mechanism for preserving the identity of the band and for their many fans to show their appreciation.
At the first reunion in 1980 the festival was expanded from a one to a two-day event with increasing numbers of guest acts. In 1981, lacking a suitable site at Cropredy, it was shifted to the grounds of Broughton Castle, a performance released as Moat on the Ledge – Live at Broughton Castle (1982).
The festival returned to Cropredy the next year (and has remained there ever since although the actual site has expanded over the years). Despite the fact that Fairport Convention was not active as a band from 1980 to 1985, the festival continued to grow. After the band reformed in 1985, the festival became Fairport's major platform for showcasing new material as well as revisiting the old.
Between 1981 and 1999, the festival was a two-day event. From 2000, it was expanded to three days—Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The festival takes place on the second full weekend in August. Originally known as just "the Cropredy reunion", the event was branded Cropredy Festival until 2005 when it was retitled Fairport's Cropredy Convention. In 2007, all available tickets were sold in advance for the first time (this would not happen again until 2014).
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