Cat Kelly, the organiser of Folk Weekend: Oxford, shares her goals

I don’t really remember a time when music wasn’t an integral part of my life; whether it was recorder lessons at school, the hours of practice to pass my flute exams, playing for my dad’s Morris team, or being holed up in the corner of a pub with my fiddle and a pint.

I still remember the moment when my dad stopped telling me to get a proper job and suggested that perhaps I needed a hobby.

I will admit, it can be overwhelming at times. For fun and relaxation, I like to play music and sing. For my job, I help other people to play music and sing. In my spare time I organise big events where there’s a lot of people playing music and singing.

In 2012 I started a company called Folk Arts Oxford, with the aim of improving access to community music making in Oxfordshire, and supporting and developing local folk music and musicians. It’s been a joy and a privilege, and more hard work than I could ever imagine, but I have been lucky to have so much support from the local folk community, and a strong band of volunteers who are really dedicated to our flagship event, Folk Weekend: Oxford.

Although folk and traditional music forms the basis of the festival, at the heart we’re about community, inclusion, and being a colourful, exciting and fun event which anyone can feel a part of.

For the last few years we’ve been working particularly hard on including people who might not usually get involved in our sort of event; we have been holding annual ceilidhs for children from local special needs schools, and this year we also hosted a special performance where my band Iris performed a set of songs which were all signed using Makaton.

I’ve been working in special needs music for around five years.

I can still remember the first time: I was observing a team working with a group of children who were so severely disabled that most of them couldn’t speak at all.

The guy leading the team handed me an odd-looking box with big coloured buttons on it, and proceeded to record me singing four lines of a song in to this box, before giving it to a girl in a wheelchair called Charlotte.

Charlotte couldn’t speak, or do very much on her own, but she could move her arm enough to press the large buttons on this contraption. As she pressed the button, a delighted grin spread over her face as she heard a voice – my voice – coming out. She pressed another button, and the voice came again, singing the next line of the song.

I sat there in tears, realising this little girl was singing, for probably the first time in her life. She couldn’t use the voice she was born with, so for this short moment in time, I had lent her mine – and she was singing with it.

My aim, my dream for Folk Weekend, is to create a festival which anyone and everyone feels a part of. I want sign language interpreters on stage in our concerts, and I want every event to be a ‘relaxed’ performance.

I want wheelchair dancing, Morris dancing, and ceilidh dancing, fiddle workshops, and singing with voice-output communication aids workshops. I want to reach out a hand to anyone who feels excluded, and if they want to participate then we will find a way. Music is for everyone. Much as I would like to think that I’m Superwoman, I really can’t do this on my own.

The next Folk Weekend is in April next year, and if you’d like to get involved in any way – from volunteering, to sponsorship or joining our Friends scheme – then please do get in touch. You can find lots of information on folkweekendoxford.co.uk

More info on my SEN Music work and my community choirs can be found on catkelly.co.uk