English Folk Dance and Song Society

National Youth Folk Ensemble Open Days
These free days are a brilliant way to play folk music as part of a band, meet the tutor team, and find out more about the Ensemble.
Cecil Sharp House - 27 May
Exeter Phoenix - 28 May
Leeds Conservatoire - 30 May
Find out more and Book now: bit.ly/3Pl1TcN

Do you teach Dance?
Whether you teach people to dance formally or informally @artscouncilengland.bsky.social want to hear from you for their survey 'Understanding Dance Provision, Progression and Pathways in England'
Complete the survey now (15-20 mins)
www.beds.ac.uk/culture-and-...

Our friends at GlosFolk have launched a fundraising appeal to support their GlosTrad project, the one-stop website for songs and tunes collected in #Gloucestershire.
Donate here if you can: glostrad.com

Swords and Stars: Rapper Sword Dance for Primary Schools Written by Lucy Huzzard and Bryony Griffith, with diagrams by Will Hampson. A resource for teachers and dance artists working with primary school age pupils. It includes written notes, audio files, an...

Resource of the Month
Swords and Stars: Rapper Sword Dance for Primary Schools
Introduction to Rapper sword dancing, including diagrams, and tune recordings, created for us by Bryony Griffith and Lucy Huzzard.
bit.ly/4l4SjqE
Image: St Godrics and St Marys Betty and rapper lock - Roswitha Chesher

We've signed Arts and Minds' letter to Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education and Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture to ask them to ensure all children can enjoy access to arts subjects throughout their school life. Will you do the same? actionnetwork.org/forms/puttin...

Photography Exhibition: Celebrating 10 Years of the National Youth Folk Ensemble Photographs from the first 10 years of The National Youth Folk Ensemble

Photography Exhibition:
Celebrating 10 Years of the National Youth Folk Ensemble
Exhibition runs until Thursday 27 August
Cecil Sharp House, London
Free
Find out more and view online: bit.ly/4rbnXEk
During the exhibition on 2 April, The Ensemble will be playing a gig: bit.ly/40kHLtX

Library Lecture: Lucy Wright - Folk is a Feminist Issue! Folk is a Feminist Issue! Uncovering the hidden women in British seasonal customs

Our next online Library Lecture:
Lucy Wright - Folk is a Feminist Issue!
Artist and researcher, Lucy Wright has long been intrigued by—and kinda angry about—the underrepresentation of women in the British folk arts.
Tue 10 Mar
7:30pm-9:00pm
Online
Book now: bit.ly/4rPW7yn

Hannah James to be Artistic Director of the National Youth Folk Ensemble The English Folk Dance and Song Society is delighted to appoint the musician and dancer Hannah James as the fourth Artistic Director of its National Youth Folk Ensemble (NYFE). Hannah will lead the En...

Announcing Hannah James as the next National Youth Folk Ensemble Artistic Director
"As a folk musician who has had many fantastic mentors over the years it feels important to be able to carry on that tradition of passing on skills and ideas to the next generation."
Read more: bit.ly/4siWHV7

Have fun dancing at the morris class Tuesdays 6:30pm at Cecil Sharp House. This week's break time chat will be "Country Gardens".
www.efdss.org/learning/adu...

Hannah James and Sonia Sabri - EFDSS Bursary Residency #folkmusic YouTube video by English Folk Dance and Song Society

Hannah James and Sonia Sabri recently spent a week at @cecilsharphouse.bsky.social working on a a new project which focuses on women in percussive dance and examines what it is to be a folk artist whose art form has a connection to a particular place and culture, thanks to receiving an EFDSS Bursary

Listen: Classic Folk Classic Folk with Mike Norris Classic Folk is unique. It mines a rich seam of wonderful folk and roots music and song from around 75 years of recordings. From the great source singers to the legends o...

This week's Classic Folk features tracks by:
@petecoevo.bsky.social
Claire Vine
@hollyclarkemusic.bsky.social
Pete Seeger
Damien O'Kane @damienandron.bsky.social
Peggy Seeger
@finncollinson.bsky.social
@naomibedford.bsky.social & Paul Simmonds
and many more
www.efdss.org/listen

Community Ceilidh dance event with live music from Romford Ceilidh Band A free fun family dance event with dance leading and live music from celebrated local Romford Ceilidh Band. Bring your friends!

We're thrilled that our Dance Mini Grant award to Havering Changing is supporting this free Community Ceilidh on Saturday 28 Feb. Featuring live music from the Romford Ceilidh Band.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/community-...

Folk Shop The Folk Shop sells a selected range of items, concentrates on items which are harder to find from general retailers, whether online or in person.    The Folk Shop is offered as a service to individua...

We've recently added more new and second hand stock to our Folk Shop - books and CDs relating to Folk music, dance and song.
bit.ly/4rK6p3f

Roundhouse launches Young Creatives Commission | Charity Today News The Commission will develop new solutions to put the arts alongside sport as a core pillar of youth engagement and opportunity. It will draw on lessons from

We're pleased to see the launch of this: Young Creatives Commission – a year‑long national inquiry into how to widen children and young people’s access to arts, culture and the creative industries: bit.ly/4aYidsr

Folk Uncovered: Online Library Course - Exploring English Folk Dance with Mike Heaney and Chloe Middleton-Metcalfe

Our new online course starts this Thursday - book now
Exploring English Folk Dance with Mike Heaney and Chloe Middleton-Metcalfe
Thursday evenings, 7.30pm
19 Feb - 9 Apr
Online
Book now: bit.ly/4oEyEhw
Image: Maltby Phoenix Sword, U.Dance 2012, photo Brian Slater, courtesy Youth Dance England.

Listen: Classic Folk Classic Folk with Mike Norris Classic Folk is unique. It mines a rich seam of wonderful folk and roots music and song from around 75 years of recordings. From the great source singers to the legends o...

Merry Pancake Day!

This week's Classic Folk includes tracks by:
The Demon Barbers
Cupola:Ward
Nick Drake
Vishtèn
Dr Strangely Strange
Sandy Denny
Shirley Collins
Blackbeard's Tea Party
Alistair Anderson & Northlands
Bottle Bank Band
Megson
Dave Burland
and more!
www.efdss.org/listen

Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the National Youth Folk Ensemble Darren Henley, Chief Executive of Arts Council England said: “For a decade, the National Youth Folk Ensemble has nurtured the energy and talent of young musicians and enriched the folk traditions of o...

Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the National Youth Folk Ensemble! 🎉
Kicking off by winning 10th year by winning an ABO Impact Award. Still to come:
An exhibition of photographs
Performances at Cecil Sharp House, FolkEast and Purbeck Valley Folk Festival
Open Days
Find out more: bit.ly/3ZFUwPd

Home | Global Music Awards Global Music Awards is a well-known international music competition which celebrates independent musicians. Global Music Awards is widely recognized by industry insiders as giving legitimacy to highly...

Huge congratulations to Suntou Susso on winning not one, but two Global Music Awards!
Gold Medal Winner for composer / composition and for originality / creativity.
Congrats Suntou!
www.globalmusicawards.com

Arundhati Roy and Sarah Perry longlisted for Women’s prize for nonfiction Sixteen authors – including Lea Ypi, Lyse Doucet and Barbara Demick – are in contention for the £30,000 award, launched to address a historic gender imbalance in nonfiction prizes

Congratulation to Zakia Sewell (part of our Black British Folk Takeover event last autumn) for her nomination for Women's Prize for Nonfiction. Her book, Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain, will be published in March: bit.ly/4rh3puP

For this month's Resource of the Month , these two choral arrangements of folk songs, both produced by Caroline Price as part of The Full English project
The Factory Operatives Call on Humanity
and The Trees They’re So High

www.efdss.org/learning/res...
www.efdss.org/learning/res...

Listen: Classic Folk Classic Folk with Mike Norris Classic Folk is unique. It mines a rich seam of wonderful folk and roots music and song from around 75 years of recordings. From the great source singers to the legends o...

Worth the wait! This week's Classic Folk episode includes:
@rachaelmcshane.bsky.social & The Cartographers
Nick Wyke & Becki Driscoll
Sgoil Chiùil Na Gàidhealtachd
@kaiakater.bsky.social
Niamh Parsons
Offa Rex
@loreenamckennitt.bsky.social
@bellowhead.bsky.social
Plus more

www.efdss.org/listen

National Youth Folk Ensemble performance in Liverpool
Music Room, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
Wed 18 February
8pm
The National Youth Folk Ensemble bring their distinctive and joyful sound to Liverpool, joined by the dynamic New-Folk band Tarren.
Book now
www.liverpoolphil.com/whats-on/con...

I like that you have mistaken me for the bourgeoise

Merry neets, morris and more: social and display dancing in the Lake District and Cumbria

@suecumbria.bsky.social historian, writer and folklorist who researches and publishes on Cumbrian customs, traditions and dialect.

Tonight: 7:30pm-9pm
Online
Book now: bit.ly/4ri5k1S
Image: Bewick Dancers

One of my Fantasy PhD subjects is Karaoke as Folk Performance. One of the places I go, some people where the most amazing costumes to sing - Liberty (Marketing and Membership)

'Not to bury Sharp, but to crucify him': A Critical Appraisal of the Academic Assault on Cecil Sharp's Politics Cecil Sharp, the most prolific and culturally-significant collector and promoter of English folk song, has for forty years been subjected to a series of virulent political critiques, culminating in a ...

Brian Peters has written a thorough examination of Cecil Sharp's views and collecting practices, which is really interesting: www.academia.edu/129495133/No...

Have fun dancing at the morris class Tuesdays 6:30pm at Cecil Sharp House. This week's break time chat will be "Bucknell - Morris Mecca". Note: No class on 17th Feb (Half Term).
www.efdss.org/learning/adu...

Image: Travelling Morrice Trigger Pond, Bucknell
Terry Carter Taborer
Ollie Simons Jig

How the work of American folk song collectors inspired The History of Sound In the early 20th century, armed with new-fangled recording devices, folklorists and ethnomusicologists set out on song-collecting expeditions across the US. Their work documented music that might oth...

From the 19th century onwards, men and women on both sides of the Atlantic were fascinated by the folk tradition and set out to catalogue songs, first by collating lyrics and annotating tunes, and later via making recordings. In the UK, the major name in the field was Cecil Sharp: bit.ly/4ks0Xin

See @eynshammorris.bsky.social dance near our painting 'Chairing the Feathers; The Eynsham Morris at the Gates of Blenheim Palace' on loan to Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
Come and join us!
Saturday 14 March
Eynsham Morris dancing at the gallery at 11.30am and 1.30pm

Radical Traditional: Folk Music for Winter, by Patrick Clarke | The Quietus In October last year the musician Angeline Morrison, whose 2022 masterpiece The Sorrow Songs drew on deep research to present new folk music that centred the real Black British figures who are often w...

Great article about the Black British Folk Collective, founded in our very own basement! @thequietus.com @angelcakepie2.bsky.social

thequietus.com/quietus-revi...