Exit National Folk Festival, Enter NC Folk Festival

The three year run of the National Folk Festival in Greensboro has come to an end and as it turns out, contrary to what I said last year, the big players in Greensboro do have a plan for next year and beyond, and it's called the North Carolina Folk Festival.

That was a big surprise to me given that I thought for sure that the city's leaders were going all in with the still unbuilt and structureless performing arts center and also I thought that Guilford County's long reputation of naysaying out of the ordinary stuff would have precluded such an event.

While I don't have any issues with the pending spinoff, I do have to question the logistics and public support. First, the bus issues have to be fixed because they were terrible this year. Instead of continuing the increased frequencies (they were every 30 minutes during the festival in '15 and three routes ran every 7-8 minutes while the other routes ran every 30 minutes last year), the regular hourly schedule was used. 

Second, a friend of mine pointed out last year some of the inner workings of the Greensboro arts scene and said that the midsized organizations had been getting less funding due to ArtsGreensboro giving all of its money to the National Folk Festival. I don't believe that 100 percent of ArtsGreensboro funding will go the NCFF, but if it does, then there could be trouble with other arts organizations in town--a prime example is that the Greensboro Fringe Festival almost went out of business due to it falling short of fundraising goals earlier this year.