“Very well organised, excellent speakers, very interesting and enjoyable”

Audience member

Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Despite a third change of venue and in spite of national rail strikes, we were delighted to welcome over 60 attendees to the Vaughan Williams in the East Conference on Saturday 26th November 2022 – an event which was set up as part of our National Lottery Heritage Fund project Vaughan Williams’ Folk.

The Stowmarket Scout Centre was a perfect venue for this event which brought together several researchers from 4 Eastern counties – Essex (Sue Cubbin), Suffolk (Katie Howson), Cambridgeshire (Mary Humphreys) and Norfolk (Caroline Davison, Jill Bennett, Liz James & Alan Helsdon) – as well as other organisations who joined us: John Treadway from The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, Steve Roud and Martin Graebe from The Traditional Song Forum and Veteran music label. The strikes prevented EFDSS joining us but we are grateful to have such good support from all of these organisations. Stalls were set up in the Centre’s small meeting room and the talks took place in the main hall.

We were delighted to welcome 7 of our 9 Young Showcase Musicians who will be working with Finn Collinson and Emma Beach in the coming months as part of this project. We will be bringing you more details of the Showcase section of the project as it develops. Follow their journey HERE.

For a programme of day see below:

The event was filmed courtesy of Jake Lee-Savage, sound recordist and this will in due course be available to view on EATMT’s Youtube page. Jake will also be using the recordings to create more podcasts to add to the growing number that he has produced for EATMT. For all audio/video/podcasts relating to EATMT see HERE – do keep checking in as there is much work being added at regular intervals.

• Introduction to the Vaughan Williams Folk Project â€“ Nicky Stockman
• “‘Something entirely new yet absolutely familiar’: the context for Vaughan Williams’s East Anglian collections”– Caroline Davison
• “A Precious Legacy: nostalgia or resource?” â€“ Sue Cubbin
• “Collecting in Cambridgeshire 1906-1908. Places, People and Songs” â€“ Mary Humphreys
• “A Norfolk Rhapsody”– Jill Bennett & Liz James
• “Up From The Sea and In From The Fields – an overview and update of research and projects from Kings Lynn to Southwold via South Norfolk” â€“ Katie Howson
• Live music from The Norfolk Broads Collections â€“ Alan Helsdon
• Collecting, Archiving, Transcribing, Publishing & Disseminating â€“ Panel Q&A
• Panel: Steve Roud, Katie Howson, Mary Humphreys, Jill Bennett, Liz James, Caroline Davison, Sue Cubbin, Alan Helsdon

Talks

Each researcher spoke for half an hour and provided in advance powerpoints/slides which made it possible to collate in advance and have running smoothly on the day.

Thanks to Mark Bartholomew for facilitating this in advance of the day and on the day. A selection of these presentations in pdf form will be made available in due course via the website – keep checking the VWF Project pages HERE .

The talks were varied and presented in different ways with some musical illustrations thrown in.

Extras!

Throughout the day, we were extremely thankful to our Kitchen Staff – Shirley Harry, Jan Robinson and Meg Bartholomew – for making coffee and teas and for setting up the wonderful selection of cakes and biscuits (including gluten free and vegan) which had been provided by the local Osier Cafe.

At lunchtime, Project manager and EATMT administrator Alex Bartholomew and Norfolk researcher, musician and long time EATMT volunteer, joined forces and played three sets of song tunes collected in Norfolk – specifically in the Broads – and arranged by Alan.

The complete set of music (dots) can be found below and a detailed list of tunes and from whom they were collected is also below:

Record breaking panels

Following the talks, two panels were set up – consisting of what was commented on as a record breaking panel – with our 6 speakers then joined by Norfolk researcher Alan Helsdon.

The first panel held was a Question and Answer session, chaired by Steve Roud (Roud Index; Traditional Song Forum etc) aimed at discussing best practice in folk song collecting, archiving, transcribing etc. It was an opportunity for each researcher to discuss how they went about finding out and using the available information for their own research purposes.

The second panel was chaired by Nicky Stockman and gave each researcher the opportunity to share the current situation regarding their own work/research in relation to publication and how we might help make that more accessible.

These two panels were not recorded but notes taken from the two panels will be made available in due course along with the Conference Proceedings.

Stalls

Thanks

This whole project – Vaughan Williams’ Folk – has been made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and runs until the Autumn of 2023.

The EATMT team would like to extend our thanks to everyone who attended this event and for contributing to the day. People travelled some considerable distances and a lot of effort was made to join us – many having to change their travel plans to make it. We are extremely grateful for the efforts made. Putting on a free event makes it easy for audiences to not bother turning up, but plenty of people did bother and for that we are extremely grateful!

Thanks go to our speakers for their willingness to share their work further afield and for sorting out in advance their presentations. It made for a much smoother running in terms of the technology and this was commented on by many audience members.

Thanks too go to Steve Roud for agreeing to chair one of the panels and to the Traditional Song Forum, the Vaughan Williams Society and Veteran for joining us.

We are extremely grateful to Jake Lee-Savage for his expertise, patience and good humour – it’s a pleasure working with you!

We are also grateful to the 1st & 3rd Stowmarket Scout Group for allowing us to use their wonderful venue and to the Osier Cafe for keeping us well fed.

There are always a number of people behind the scenes who get involved but don’t always get thanked directly – so thank you Shirley, Jan, Meg, Becky, Alan and Eammon for being here and supporting.

Alex Bartholomew & Nicky Stockman December 2022