The EFDSS has just become an Arts Council England Regularly Funded Organisation. There will be £200k a year spent on all sorts of strategic projects both in London and around the country. This would never have happened 10 years ago, when the EFDSS was seen by the folk world itself as a backward and inward-looking organisation, and it barely registered on the Arts Council's radar. The process of modernisation and development has been going on for several years now, and long may it continue. A good example of the type of work we are talking about is the Take 6 project, which digitised 6 of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library's major collections and put them on-line, as well as taking several of those collections back into the communities from which they were first collected through projects in schools. Next, I believe that they are working in partnership with the Wren Trust on digitising the Baring-Gould collection, and that it will be housed on the EFDSS site.

EFDSS is currently recruiting several new members of staff to help make their new goals achievable. It is a robust, thriving organisation, and the the magazine has, under its current editorship, taken massive steps forward as well.

There is a lot to be proud of.