Carolyn Robson sent me this brief report on the ‘Full English’ educational programme that she thought you might like to hear about:
‘The Full English is possibly the most exciting and significant thing to happen to British folk music in at least a generation…It is the creation of the largest searchable digital archive of early 20th century English folk arts manuscripts; a national programme of workshops, lectures, creative projects with 18 schools, training and community events in all nine English regions…’
Teams of professional folk artists including John Kirkpatrick, Mary Humphreys, Rob Harbron and Miranda Sykes, Hazel Askew, Hannah James to name but a few, have been working in primary and secondary schools to introduce some of the songs and tunes from the Full English archive. I have been involved in the educational aspect of the Full English as lead coordinator in the teacher training days in the 9 regions. As part of these CPD days some of the artists have discussed and demonstrated their approaches together with teachers from individual schools involved.
I was also commissioned to arrange 7 of the songs from Bristol and 3 from Newcastle for primary age children, as well as 2 carols from Bedfordshire for a workshop day for Community Choirs, all of which are now up on the website for anyone to access. The project has been a huge success and I feel has stimulated interest in folk music in schools and the wider community. Special thanks should go to Steve Roud for his indexing of the material. Altogether a remarkable resource!