EFDSS used to have regional offices but they all disappeared years ago.

I have been involved with folk music for well over 50 years, as a singer in folk clubs, a morris dancer and musician, dance band musician, and I've helped to run events including a long-running ceilidh series. I don't believe the EFDSS has had the slightest bearing on anything I've done in all that time.

I find that disappointing, because I feel it should be important to me, but the simple fact is that it has always been an irrelevance. Its focus has always been elsewhere, and particularly in recent years it has ceased to show any interest in grass roots folk. I am far alone in thinking this, because the dismal membership numbers show that very few folkies feel the need to join. It seems clear to me that the EFDSS's objectives and activities are fundamentally out of line with the actual folk scene.

I acknowledge I have benefited from the work of others who have discovered songs and tunes in VWML, although I have never used it myself. The Library is indeed an important resource, which seems to be held hostage by EFDSS (in the sense that most arguments for supporting EFDSS often come down to protecting the Library).

I do question whether EFDSS's current pursuit of what it likes to call "folk arts" is in line with its charitable objects. Its attempts to embrace other cultures which now form part of English society seem both patronising and at odds with its main purpose which is "to preserve English folk dances and songs ... and to encourage the practice of them in their original forms".

I really do wish it well, but it seems to exist in a different world from the one in which I practice folk music.