"all those who are keen to benefit from this project;"

It's not something that would greatly benefit me personally *now*, as a non-folkie I was motivated enough to find other routes - however such an initiative would have made my initial learning curve much smoother. As for *people at large* however, I'm sure it could help vastly in helping to make other non-folkies aware of the existance traditional song. Traditional song is a very niche interest, itself contained within the niche interest of folk music. If you don't dig folk music as a commercial genre, you are unlikely to know anything of English traditional song.

It's a great pity that virtually the only people who even know of its existance, are middle-class Guardian reading professionals of a certain age. As I said to one of my early corespondants "I didn't even know this stuff existed, is there something wrong with this picture?" On another thread recently, a couple of music bloggers asked for constructive suggestions about how the folk community could begin collectively working on making sound archives publicly available online. Supportive posts came from Jim Carroll and a couple of others, but otherwise I watched with some interest the amount of energy that was put into rejecting these young enthusiastic bloggers ideas from several of the posters here. If the BNP, as the new self-styled folk-lovin' "voice of the people" hasn't already cottoned onto some of this as potential political propaganda, you can bet they soon will. I can easily imagine Lizzie Cornish stylee tirades about the exclusive world of middle-class academic Traddies busy jealously keeping the musical heritage of the ordinary working people to themselves, coming out of Nick Griffins mouth.

As for actively contributing to such an initiative myself, absolutely yes - I think making the songs of 'the people' readily available to 'the people', would be a project of immense collective cultural worth. And certainly one that far outstrips any possible value in tarting up the gardens of C# house - but I guess that's an issue to be taken up with those individuals who decide what projects are worth funding with public money.