The Folk Federation Young Folk Music Artists Awards 2020 have been announced with Freya Peterson named Junior Young Folk Awardee with her song Stick Around and
Felicity Dowd – Senior Young Folk Awardee with her song Blue Skies
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Each prize will include regular mentoring organised by Folk Federation, over the year of the award, aimed at developing performance and presentation skills. Following on from this the artists will be invited to perform at one or more NSW Folk Federation concerts, and it is hoped also at a folk club and/or festival.
Entries for the awards were reviewed by an independent panel of judges who were asked to be fairly liberal and inclusive as to what is acceptable as folk music for these awards.
Though experienced performers are also encouraged to enter what the NSW Folk Federation were looking were performers with potential. Judges were asked to look for performers who showed promise as folk music artists, rather than necessarily as yet having experience as performers. The 16yo Bega singer-songwriter said of the win "this was an unexpected surprise and I would like to thank the folk federation of NSW for giving me this opportunity. Also, a big congratulations to Freya for winning the junior section."
VIDEO: Blue Skies
Felicity said "With all this spare time in isolation I’ve decided to spend some time working on my guitar skills. I’ve been listening to a lot of artists like John Butler and Daniel Champagne, and getting inspired by their unique playing styles and use of tuning. This is a little improvisation I’ve done using some adaptions of riffs I’ve learnt from John Butler’s ‘Ocean’. Enjoy!"
VIDEO: source Felciity won the Youth Category in the Tamworth Songwriters Association singer songwriters quest at the Toyota Tamworth Country Music Festival. The TSA is the Tamworth Songwriters Association is an non profit organisation that promotes and supports Australian country music songwriters. Felicity has been performing both at Tamworth and at the Australian National Busking Championship since 2017.
