Perhaps this might clarify the setting up of the Group - from the expanded edition - p 296
Jim Carroll

"In 1964, an established Tyneside singer resident in London said, in the course of an interview, that Lloyd and MacColl should share the benefits of their enormous experience with all those newcomers on the scene who were anxious to improve themselves. After reading the article, I phoned Bert and suggested that it might be a good idea to start a discussion group. He was distinctly cool and refused to be involved. Peggy and I mentioned it to two or three friends and almost before we had realised what was happening we found ourselves taking part in a discus¬sion on the problems of the revival with several dozen young singers.
We had, previous to this, tutored several other singers singly. Our original intention in taking on the group was to describe some of our own experiences and to give warnings of the dangers and pitfalls which confront those who make singing folk-songs a full-time job. It didn't work out like that. Within a short time we found ourselves devoting one or two evenings each week to a group whose numbers fluctuated between twelve and twenty-five. It was a mutual-aid group where everyone gave a hand in solving each other's problems. For instance, at a number of meetings, a singer would sing a song with which she or he was having trouble with, or present a performance of a number of songs meant to represent a 'spot' at a folk club. Afterwards, the group would discuss and analyse what they had heard.
The objective of these sessions was to improve a singer's performance by seeking out the weak spots and then working to eliminate them. Since new problems were constantly arising, new techniques of dealing with them had to be developed and old techniques had to be adapted. We introduced the kind of voice exercises that had been taught in Theatre Workshop by Nelson Illingworth. We invented exercises based on Laban's effort-scales and we had exercises for relaxation and to improve articulation and the sense of pitch. These formed the basis of our purely physical work."