Steve

I don't disagree with you, the archive is no doubt of great importance and long may they continue to provide this service.

Tootler

1. No I wasn't joking.
2. If the raison d'etre is to promote English Folk Music and Dance, then in my opinion they are failing to do so other than in London.

I'm not suggesting that the paradigm shift encompasses international folk dance and song as this would be a fairly mammoth task. How about we start with just the British Isles first.

Neither do I deny the right of the English to term what they do as English.

The society as Steve says cannot fund such things as regional events, and as they have held out the begging bowl to the Heritage Lottery Fund, it would seem that they are unable to fund their Raison d'etre as well.

One way to increase available funding, is to increase membership. Pure English Folk Dance and Song is a fairly small remit. Since we have embraced multi-culturalism there is a vibrant mixture of different genre in the country which is by all accounts thriving in both young and old generations.

If they were to open up to other country's genre such as our closest neighbours then membership, support and funding may increase.

If you take England's closest neighbours such as Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France. If you were to score score The english on a popularity poll you may find they do not rate highly. Therefore "English" in essence becomes an off putting barrier.

I speak mainly English and a smattering of Welsh (not much) because I attended a Welsh grammar school. Their modus operandi was that because all Welsh speaking students had to take English language lessons then all English speakers had to take Welsh language lessons for the first three years. I didn't have a problem with that because it seemed reasonable.

I also regularly watch, gaelic (Scots) and gaelic (Irish) music programmes. They are kind enough to put sub titles up so I can understand what the announcer is saying. As far as I'm aware there are no regular "English" folk music programmes available to watch at all! and if there were, would they have gaelic Scots, Irish or Welsh subtitles. I doubt it.

So, in essence in order to secure funding to preserve a fairly small section of "Pure English" folk dance and song maybe it would be prudent to expand the remit a little. Working on the principle that if funding for one language is getting hard to come by then maybe taking on four languages might provide it.

There are various organisations in the country such as The Scottish Music Centre, The National Library of Wales' music collection, The Irish Traditional Music Archive, The National Dance Archive of Ireland, Scottish Dance Archives that may be open to closer collaboration.

The grant was a one off for a specific purpose. To secure long term funding you need more vision than a begging bowl.

The United Kingdom Folk Dance and Song Society may have more chance of survival in the long run.

CC