EFDSS (English Folk Dance and Song Society) has announced bursaries for eight artists and groups to create new music rooted in English folk. Four Creative Bursaries and four Creative Seed Funding Bursaries have been awarded.

The Seed Funding Bursaries are for emerging artists and provide up to £750 to research and develop new work. The successful applicants are:

Grace Smith – to create new music inspired by sources of traditional Cleveland music and clog dance.

Louise Jordan – to support the development of the project ‘No Petticoats Here’, telling the stories of women from the First World War, and the creation of songs exploring themes of social and political activism and responding to the experiences of women over the past one hundred years.

Thom Ashworth – to support the creation of work inspired by what it means to be English in a post-colonial era, and how to voice dissent when freedoms are eroded and/or monetised.

Nicola Beazley – for a composition and performance project looking at new English dance tunes, influenced by other traditional English music forms, including but not limited to English folk, brass band music, Indian raag, jazz and klezmer.

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Creative Bursaries
Creative Bursaries are awarded to established artists. Each bursary is worth up to £2,000 and includes rehearsal space at Cecil Sharp House and access to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. The four successful applicants are:

Rowan Rheingans – to support the creation of a first solo show, inspired by Rheingans’s grandmother’s recollections of life under the Nazi regime and exploring performance techniques with dramaturg Liam Hurley.

Ian Stephenson – to create a solo multi-layered performance using emerging technologies to showcase arrangements of traditional English folk repertoire alongside self-penned pieces.

Ben Walker and Rob Harbron – for ‘The Lost Tunes project’, which will research, arrange, rehearse and perform a set of traditional and original music.

Stick in the Wheel – Following successful recent albums English Folk Field Recordings and Follow Them True, Stick in the Wheel will undertake further research into English folk music and traditions.

For more on EFDSS bursaries, visit www.efdss.org.