EFDSS appears to be focussing on being taken seriously by the arts establishment, and no doubt projects such as the collaboration between morris and contemporary dancers help to obtain funding. I'm not sure they're very relevant to folk at the grass roots level.'

I don't get the ill informed notion that; we give them what they understand and then they'll like what we want them to like. You can use folk music and dance as a stimulus for any art form you care to mention. 'Return of the Native' contains reference to a mummers play but it's still a novel, 'La Fille Mal Gardee' contains a clog dance but it's still a ballet. 'English Rhapsody' by Delius contains 'Brigg Fair' as its main theme but it isn't folk and as for the score to 'Titanic' by James Horner it is bursting with folk song themes in numbers. But it's still a film score! What I don't get is why the only example of the society's work offered was a piece of contemporary dance? (As an ex- teacher of A level Dance for ten years I can also remark that it wasn't very good contemporary dance either)
Experience tells me that if you teach people folk dance they get interested in folk dance. If you give a guy an electric guitar he isn't suddenly going to turn into a Dave Swarbrick.
The society needs to recognise that it no longer has the teachers nationally. Other organisations do. It needs to recognise that it doesn't understand the term 'grass roots'. It needs to take on board that it isn't doing a great job of fulfilling its mission statement because, as demonstrated at the AGM, it is currently unwilling to talk to the experts, movers and shakers in the provinces.