Agreed on that last point, SS. It's not really fair to be speculating on the future of the organisation or its direction based on gossip.

Re the colour magazine: I think it's a great step forward. The magazine is not just a good read - it's a good marketing tool for EFDSS. When it's sold at festivals it is available to the general public. While I think that the content has, for some time, been able to hold its own against more commercial publications, it has not quite had the equivalent professional look, largely because so few magazines are produced in monochrome these days. By updating that look, I think it gives a better impression of the society itself: an organisation that's not a parochial backwater, but which instead is striving to be relevant and contemporary.

I think everyone would agree that EFDSS could do with an influx of new, younger members. Hopefully the new-look magazine will be one tool in helping to achieve that goal (especially now that the magazine has got its own Myspace!). I think the content is still unique: there's not really any other folk magazine that carries the range of features that EDS does. But by updating its look, maybe the magazine can get that content out to a readership that extends beyond the current membership. And maybe some of those new readers will eventually want to become members themselves...

Of course, the magazine can't achieve this goal on its own. There have to be changes in perception about what the society is there for, and what it does, if a new generation of members is going to be attracted. But I think there have been some very interesting things happening recently, and the general direction seems to have been a very positive one. So I'm reserving judgement about the latest developments at CSH till we know what's really going on.