Les in Chorlton wrote:

I think the discussion is around the general point and purpose of the EFDSS. Perhaps it has shaken off its history long ago and the second revival simply became something much bigger and more effective in terms of 'doing folk'?

Les, the EFDSS will never shake off it's history while Mudcat is around.

As far as the revival is concerned, folk never really went away and hopefully never will. It doesn't need the EFDSS in order to survive and if the society ceased operations tonight, people would continue doing what they do. The society brings a resource and a richness to what we do by constantly caring for bits of our heritage we didn't know we had and consequently might have lost.

I'm not too far away from the opinion of GUEST.cs who suggests that the EFDSS should concentrate on being a custodian of the archive but having spent 10 years of my life trying to turn the society round I'm aware that this is not a financially viable option in the short term.

I agree that the society should get its act together with regard to education but I'm willing to wait a little while at least and see what the new education director puts in place with the newly available funding.

With regard to the regions, this is a thorny problem which plagued the society for all the decade I was involved in its governance. As current chair of Ryburn 3 Step in West Yorkshire I'm aware that we have no need of support from the EFDSS (unless they want to send us some cash) and don't need their guidance. Indeed, members of R3S have acted as consultants to the society on various matters because we have expertise that they can use. It would be useful, however, to have someone like EFDSS help with networking and communication, in much the same way as the AFO tries to support festival organisers. It's something I was hoping for from the now defunct Folk Arts England. Now that EFDSS have taken over the FAE funding I await developments on this front.

While on the subject of regions, I'm a little mystified by Gozz's comment above -

I still wonder what is going on here in the South West where self appointed groups of people seem to ignore what is happening in the grass roots of folk music (and dance - unless you dance their way) .

Do these self appointed people belong to a regional organisation? Is it an old style efdss group? What powers do these self appointed people give themselves? I'm interested to know what you mean.