Tickets on sale Wednesday 3rd July
Multiplying Jig Dolls
Here at Trust HQ, we’ve been very busy – so busy that Spring came and went without the production of the Spring Newsletter.
In our Winter newsletter we shared our new Jig Doll Logo created by artist and musician Karen Cater for Traditional Music Day. Since then, the Stowmarket and Meadlands Mens’ Shed have turned them into bigger figures and over the summer, once painted, the smaller ones will appear in shops along the main High Street in Stowmarket and the large ones outside venues on Traditional Music Day.
We have a small but incredibly committed team of volunteers to help bring Traditional Music Day to the streets and into the venues of Stowmarket, Suffolk for Saturday 21st September. We are just starting to update our webpages and our biggest news is that the daytime events are free thanks to local council funding. We have tickets for sale for our two evening concerts and these are on sale from Wednesday 3rd July via the John Peel Centre. Visit our TRADITIONAL MUSIC DAY landing page to find out the latest about this exciting day. It will be updated regularly over the coming months.
Stepdance Day
But first, we are delighted to be stepping back into Essex to host Stepdance Day in a really popular musical pub – The Compasses at Littley Green, near Chelmsford where Steve and his team are eagerly waiting to greet you on Sunday 21st July from 12 noon.
This pub hosts a regular Monthly music session (thanks to Myles Barrett) and is the pub that Steve Monk used to host a session at, prior to his untimely death in 2001. Stepdance Day – and particularly the Steve Monk Memorial Competition – has been in existence for over 20 years – being created in Essex by the Delarre Family and since 2004, EATMT have run the event. We have endeavoured to move the event across the counties in recent years and our arrival into Essex has been long awaited.
We are expecting an array of stepdancers and musicians from across our East Anglian regions to showcase the varying styles of stepping and we hope to encourage new dancers to the board. There will be workshops and competitions including the second Jig Doll workshop and competition.
Our wonderful patron, Gloria Buckley will be running her famous Raffle and she would be grateful of any donations for the prize table on the day.
Keep up to date with the programme of the day HERE.
Afternoon of Music, Song & Dance moves to Norfolk
Sunday 17th November 2pm-4pm
We are moving our series of Sunday Afternoons into Norfolk for this current financial year. Once again, we are grateful to Jan Robinson for making the event happen. We hope to keep the event free again but naturally, gratefully receive any donations on the day.
Come and say hello!
We are setting up stall in various locations over the summer within East Anglia. Some are at Folk events, others at local Stowmarket based events. Do come along and say hello if you see us:
Bury Folk Festival Saturday 30th June
Stowmarket Carnival 14th July
Primadonna Festival , Stowmarket 26-28 July
FolkEast Festival, Glemham 16th-18th August
Bungay Folk Festival 6th-8th September
Sad Farewells
Eric Baker
Our lovely friend, singer and jig doll dancer Eric Baker passed away after a short illness in the Spring. The shanty group who Eric was a member of (The Rum Old Boys) sang two songs at his funeral. He will be sadly missed.
Jim Lawrence
It is with great sadness that we report the passing of sailor, sail maker and wonderful musician Jim Lawrence. He was a regular face at EATMT events – most recently at last year’s More than Melodeons and Stepdance Day events.
You can hear about Jim on BBC Radio 4’s Last Word which was broadcast on Friday 8th March 2024 HERE (20 mins in but he is remembered with other great lives lost in recent weeks and the whole programme is worth a listen!)
2024 EATMT Events so far…
We’ve had a busy year so far and our first event of the year was another Sunday Afternoon of Music, Song and Dance which took place on Sunday March 24th at Walsham Le Willows Memorial Hall.
Read here for our report on this welcoming, free event.
Swiftly following on from this event, we jointly hosted the Traditional Song Forum’s Spring Conference at the Stowmarket Scout Centre.
We were treated to such a varied and interesting number of talks – much of it relevant to East Anglia. Our report can be found HERE and we will be shortly including film of most of the talks on this day. Our thanks to Steve Roud, Martin and Shan Graebe and the TSF team for inviting us to get involved.
Our 3rd More than Melodeons at Wingfield Barns at end of May took place, once again with something for everyone and included first time workshops in Dulcimer and Piano Accordion. We are extremely grateful to have the support of the Wingfield Barns team on the day but also, the event was made possible by the support of Cllr Lavinia Hadingham and Acorn Instruments.
We had a wonderful group of tutors who worked their socks off to deliver some well thought out workshops and who then performed in an early evening concert.
Read our report HERE and do think about joining us next year if you haven’t so far! It’s a really wonderful event (even if we say so ourselves!).
New Article
A Story of Dulcimers by Alan Helsdon
If you’re interested in submitting an article that you think supporters of the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust might be interested to read, then do get in touch!
Happenings at Trust HQ
In a bid to be mindful of unnecessary expenses, we’ve had another office move. Still at the wonderful Red Gables where we live with other local charities, we’ve moved three offices into one big one over April and May. No mean feat considering we were also running events over this time too!
Alex would like to thank Jan Robinson for her help and also to Mark and Jon who were dragged in to do the final move to enable the job to be done on time.
CFB Solutions – local IT company – put the computers back into communication with each other again and updated the software so we’re firing on all cylinders again. There’s no address change and everything we own is now in one room which makes life easier.
In mid May the Board of Trustees had a half day Future Proofing day facilitated by Norwich based Adam Clark. Adam has over 20 years of experience working in social inclusion and cultural policy and projects, in VCSE, public and private sectors, headed policy and strategy teams in local government, and led many local, regional and national partnership projects. He has experience as a trustee, volunteer and manager, and now works as a freelance coach, workshop leader and trainer. Aside from his day job, Adam is a musician with a particular draw to folk and the links to his East Anglian roots. Recently he has been named as one of the eight new musicians recognised by the organisation Live Music Now.
As a result of this really positive day, new ideas and plans are being formulated. Watch this space…
Other events in the area…
We do try to promote a handful of events and organisations doing some great stuff in the region but obviously, what we do barely scratches the surface of what’s going on. Mardles (online) is still doing brilliant work with this and they would be our first port of call and there are other organisations who are geared to specifically do this. We will try to promote on our separate page but please bear in mind that “we” is actually a part time singular “we”! Other Traditional Music Events in the Area…
Requests for help
If you would be happy to take event posters or flyers to a regular club, session or your village notice board, please do get in touch. We would be happy to post these out to you in order to spread the word of the work we are doing. We are also looking for a small number of volunteer stewards for Traditional Music Day. Do get in touch if you think you can help.
Thanks
As we head into the summer months, so our volunteers are ramping up the hours committed to bringing Traditional Music Day to fruition. We are extremely grateful to all of those involved in this – the event simply can’t happen without them.
Nor can the organisation survive without the support from Town, District and occasional County funding for which we are extremely grateful. Our popular Friends Membership scheme is also key to our existence and we like to say thank you to those who commit £15 per yer by offering discounted rates on our tickets. If you’re not already a member, then please do consider joining. You can find out more here.
We look forward to seeing you in the coming months. Do come and show your support – join in, make a donation, buy tickets.
Happy Summer!