Any notion that the 2024 National Folk Festival will be a tame event was exploded when Shortis and Simpson burst into a round of the ditty, Bob Menzies’ Balls, during the National Folk Festival launch at Smiths Alternative on Wednesday morning.

Shortis, the recipient of a recent National Library of Australia fellowship, has been deep in the stacks researching protest songs in Australia and now, he told those present, has 10 hours’ worth of material which he will get down to two 50-minute sets by the time the festival hits on March 28.

Steering the launch was managing director, Heidi Pritchard, brimming with excitement as she introduced the 56th annual Folk Festival and the 31st in Canberra, one which would be “inclusive, kind, and representative.”

There would, Pritchard boasted, be 950 performers, including a troupe of Morris dancers and more than 1000 volunteers, some of them from overseas.

First Nations artists would be to the fore, with the return of Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse from WA, Radical Son from the south coast and Alinta Barlow from Canberra, but as well, the festival was enjoying an ongoing collaboration with the ANU School of Music that would result in First Nations performances at the event.

Joining Shortis and Simpson to entertain supporters and media this morning were folk/alt singer-songwriter Robyn Martin from Candelo and poet-artist Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, who recited her poem, Dancing with Crows.

Joint artistic directors, Michael Sollis, Holly Downes and Chris Stone, all graduates of the ANU School of Music and all veterans of the festival, supported  Pritchard in emphasising that this year’s festival would be explicitly and unambiguously “for everyone”.

National Folk Festival, Exhibition Park in Canberra, March 28-April 1.