Welcome to the new Fiddle Festival of Wales website.
The site documents the history of our fiddle competition and festival, and aims to keep everyone up-to-date with our plans to revive the event once again.
Our old web address, which has not been in use since 2013, has been adopted by another venture. Unfortunately, they have chosen to use the old site to associate our name with a completely false history of our festival. We are not affiliated or associated in any way with the event being advertised at the '.org.uk' web address. We have contacted the venues mentioned on the site, and they also have no knowledge of it. We have also attempted to contact the site owner, but have had no response so far. It was extremely upsetting to see a video of the last Fiddle Festival of Wales, organised by the late John Carpenter, being used to legitimise the '.org.uk' website, with no regard to how this would affect his family and friends. The video featured John, his family, and myself, as well as many other attendees, and was filmed by another of the original organisers. None of our permissions were sought for it to be used in the way that it was, and if they had been, we would have refused.
The launch of this website has been delayed because of the worry that any information we put online could be subject to similar treatment. However, it also feels disrespectful to the many supporters of the Fiddle Festival of Wales, as an established, respected organisation, to delay the launch of the site and the next festival. We had hoped that, because the '.org.uk' website was due to lapse in July this year, that the other organisation would have released it so as not to cause any further confusion, but sadly this is not the case, and it has been renewed for a further two years. We do not know what the owners' intentions are, but we hope that the sponsors mentioned on the '.org.uk' site are fully aware that they are not in fact sponsoring us. We also wish to gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the ticketing websites, who had been contacted by the '.org.uk' site to advertise tickets for an event that they were organising, using our history. The ticketing websites decided that this would be misleading, and withdrew the adverts.
Moving forwards, I can personally assure you that this website, www.fiddlefestivalofwales.com, is our official online home. It can be accessed by two other official routes - www.fiddlefestival.wales will take you directly to the website in English, and www.gwylffidil.cymru to the website in Welsh. In time, my hope is that the owners of the '.org.uk' will clarify any misunderstandings, apologise for any confusion, and perhaps transfer the domain back to us. For now, though, accept no imitations!
Jamie Nemeth
Webmaster / Welsh Celtic Fiddle Champion 2007