English Folk Dance & Song Society

General information

EFDSS is the national folk arts development organisation for England. We are here to champion the English traditional arts – music, song, dance, storytelling, customs and traditions – as part of the rich and diverse cultural landscape of the UK.

We’re about preserving them, and we do that in our award winning library, the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (VWML) named after our former president, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

But we’re also about promoting – shouting about the richness and huge variety of art forms and wonderful people that work under this all-encompassing, very elastic term called FOLK, and providing endless opportunities for people to get involved.

And we’re about developing. Folk is living, breathing and constantly being re-invented; we encourage artists to be inspired by the songs and dances that have been handed down through the generations and support them in various ways to create new songs, tunes and dances.

From big bands to solo singers, morris dancers to contemporary choreographers, schools to mass participation, intimate folk clubs to major concert halls – our work reaches far and wide. And we’d love you to be a part of it.