Probably the biggest news of the year (Decade? Century?) is the launch of the Full English project. There are three main elements to the project. There is an extensive educational programme for both adults and children, of which one of the components is the series of ‘Folk Song in England’ workshops being led by Steve Roud, with the assistance of other experts in particular areas (see separate heading for more on this.) Another is the performance of songs taken from the Full English collection which, have been put together by Fay Hield as a result of a commission by the Performing Rights Society. Fay has assembled a band with some outstanding musicians, who will be performing in a series of concerts later this year. For details of the band and of the tour see here.
The third part of the project is the creation of a major new online resource containing the manuscript collections of 12 important collectors of English traditional song. These can be found as ‘The Full English’ on the revised and updated VWML website: www.vwml.org. The manuscripts of the seven collectors previously included in the ‘Take Six’ project have also been incorporated to give a world-beating resource with the manuscript collections of 19 of the leading English folk song collectors. It is not possible to describe all the marvelous things that are on the site and the ways in which it can be explored. It is a superb piece of work and the large team that were involved in its creation, led by Malcolm Taylor, Steve Roud and Richard Butterworth deserve our admiration and thanks for their hard and creative work.