English Folk Dance and Song Society: Talent Development Partner 2023
Folk Discovery: Creating 21st Century Folk Music
The English Folk Dance and Song Society it the national development organisation for the folk arts. Through our Alan James Creative Bursary programme and showcase platforms with festival partners, we support creative artists to explore traditional folk music, to collaborate with artists from other music genres and art forms, and to create and perform new works inspired by traditional folk songs and tune, ensuring the genre continues to be relevant in and current today’s society.Over the past 7 years as a Talent Development Partner, EFDSS has supported 200 artists to develop new creative ideas through bursaries and audiences for their work through showcases.
Angeline Morrison was a recipient of our Alan James Creative Bursary award in 2021/22. Her project “The Sorrow Songs : Folk Songs of the Black British Experience” was a research and creative project to explore Englishness and what it means to be British, to demonstrate that Blackness and Englishness are not always separate identities. Angeline wrote a series of songs composed in the style of traditional English folk song, choosing hidden stories such as ‘Unknown African Boy’ as her subject matter. The album was release in October 2022 and the live show premiered at Cecil Sharp House in the same month. The Guardian rated the album top of its top 10 folk albums for 2022.”The dazzling culmination of an ambitious lockdown project by the Morrison – a gorgeous singer and multi-instrumentalist – to create a living catalogue of Black British folk song.” The Guardian 2022