THE Wimborne Folk Festival is set to make a return in June next year, despite organisers cancelling the event in August.

The hugely popular event will be held on June 7, 8 and 9 with a new name – the Wimborne Minster Folk Festival – and a different committee.

Mike Carhart-Harris, who is handling publicity for the festival, said: “It’s very early days, but we’re very excited about it.

“We are looking to continue the work the previous organisers have done – they left us a good legacy and we want to respect that. “We don’t want Wimborne to lose one of its most important cultural events.”

Wimborne Business Improvement District (BID) member Richard Heading said the new organisers hope to return the festival to its roots.

“Lots of people want to make this a proper folk festival again, as it was previously, and dispose of the drunkenness that tends to happen in the evening,” he said.

“In my opinion it morphed into a heavy metal festival in recent years.”

The summer event was first held in 1980, and attracts 25,000 people to the town.

But this year, organisers said they were struggling to raise the £35,000 needed to stage the event, adding that they did not feel supported by businesses in the town.

Linda Wild, who organised the festival with husband Les and friends Brian and Maria Bisp, said they’d had nothing to do with the new event.

“We decided not to continue with it,” she said.

“They suddenly seem to have realised how much they have to lose.

“We’ve now retired – we decided we’d had enough.

“It’s a shame people did not find it necessary to provide financial support for the existing event, and now they are going to put their money into a whole new event.”

East Dorset District Council has pledged £14,000 towards next year’s costs, which is the same amount they put forward for the 2012 event.