This has always been a major problem. The London-centric society, even when I first joined in the 60s, found it very hard to connect with the grass roots, particularly song. I was very lucky to belong to a folk club that had a full set of the Journals and was a member as a club. We also had a very enthusiastic dance-based regional officer based in the city who encouraged what we did and initially got our dance teams off the ground. At its height the club ran a once a week folk club, workshops, mummers team, sword, morris, clog, country dance teams, dance bands, and a folk show that went out into surrounding villages. We had catalysts who kept everything together and we were almost all in our early 20s and fully involved. However, as these 20-year olds got married and had families they tended to specialise more, still staying involved, but along with the dying off of the older members and this the scene in our area had a tendency to fragment.

Apart from the few older dancers I am probably the only EFDSS member left in the city. Although helping to hold together a local folk scene I couldn't contemplate trying to convince any of our teams to become members now. As Matt says, why would they, especially in the deteriorating economic climate?