The event is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, with some of the biggest names in the music industry heading for the town, including punk rockers Buzzcocks, festival favourites Chumbawamba and acclaimed violin player Tasmin Little.

Three of the major acts booked for the festival, from June 20-22, swept the board at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, where Martin Simpson scooped best album and best original song, Andy Cutting won best musician while Rachel Unthank and the Winterset took the Horizon Award for emerging new talent.

These days, the festival is also drawing big names from outside the music industry, from politician Tony Benn to comedian Graham Fellows.

Twenty five years ago, the festival’s headline act included local artists The Watersons. This year Waterson:Carthy with family member Mike Waterson will be returning to Beverley to perform.

It has come a long way since the early 1980s, when members of the White Horse Folk Club decided that Beverley was the ideal location for a music festival.

Founder Chris Wade, who took on the task of adminstrator and artistic programmer, said Beverley’s streets and pubs, together with the Picture Playhouse, were considereed an ideal setting for a festival. The organisers of the folk club were also keen to promote concerts with artists of greater stature than they could afford in the small folk club room upstairs in the pub.

Initially the programme was limited to traditional music artists, but as the festival developed over the years family and children’s events became an integral part of the activities and its artistic scope was broadened to encompass contemporary, world and other forms of music.

The festival organisers were all volunteers who struggled right from the start to scrape together funding from local councils and the Arts Council.

After 13 years, the workload took its toll and all the committee stepped down, except for Chris, now the festival director, who found a new group of volunteers to carry on the work.

But she says that it has continued to be an often uphill struggle to ensure that the festival continues, particularly as funding bodies are facing increasing pressure on their limited budgets.

She said: “Most people seem to think that the organisers of the festival earn a lot of money from it, whereas in truth we have to subsidise it out of our own pockets. Over the years I have put in thousands of pounds to keep it going. I often wonder why, but at the end of the day I personally keep doing it because I believe in the music and because I want to make a difference to peoples’ lives through it.”

Today the festival is organised from offices in North Dalton, near Driffield and continues to be almost totally run by volunteers, with just one paid job-share post.

Festival activities during the year now include concerts in venues in Beverley and around the region, as well as education workshops.