English Folk Dance & Song Society: Talent Development Partner 2018
The Creative Roots programme supports musicians working in with English folk music by supporting new music creations through a creative bursary programme and showcase performances at UK festivals and at the EFDSS’ own venue, Cecil Sharp House in London.
As Talent Development Partners, we ill continue to sustain our creative bursary and showcase programmes offers six bursaries to emerging and mid-career artists to develop new musical ideas using English folk music as their source material.
Through the bursary programme, artists are able to stretch their creative potential in a safe environment, experimenting with different sounds and may collaborate with artists from other art forms and genres. Although the funding is offered for pure research and development, past recipients have gone on to produced new shows and new albums from the material created with their bursary funding support.
The showcase programme offers 25 new and emerging folk music artists/bands to showcase at two major English folk festivals – Sidmouth Folk Week and Manchester Folk Festival – and perform at Cecil Sharp House as support acts to established artists. These opportunities provide the occasion to hone stage and performance craft and provide exposure to audiences and other programmers, and so help develop audience following and further performance opportunities.