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DIGITAL FOLK 1; PARTICIPATORY ARTS IN THE DIGITAL AGE 27th November 2015, 10am – 5pm University of Sheffield, The Engineering Faculty Boardroom, Mappin Building, S1 3JD The first in a series of research events from Digital Folk – a two year research project that examines the ways in which folk arts participants use digital resources. […]

Any project on digital anything will obviously benefit from the development of digital technology and gadgets – not least that they are now smaller and cheaper than ever before. While Simon and I have extensive experience in conducting field research, technology has lurched forward at an astounding speed since we started out and the Digital […]

In this series of posts, I’m trying to work through some of the key differences between the folk arts and other types of creative activities when their participants are studied in terms of online/digital communities. Having written about the issues surrounding transmission and community in my two previous posts, in this post I’m going to grapple (very briefly!) with […]

In the previous post, I suggested that the folk arts were unusual among amateur creative practices because the way in which knowledge (including repertoire, style, etc.) is passed between people is to some extent definitive of the activities. To study a change in the transmission of folk (i.e. through the use of digital media/technology) is […]

Research collaboration often results in discussions that illustrate perfectly the need to “step outside” of one’s research context every now and again, and to look at the people and activities that you’re studying from a newcomer’s perspective. I’ve recently enjoyed such a discussion with my collaborator David Gauntlett as we worked towards the launch event for […]

“How do you fancy going to China?” was not what I had expected Simon to say as we were on the train to our launch event in London at the beginning of April, but I wasn’t going to dismiss the idea out of hand… and a good job too! Despite the short call (three weeks!) […]

1st April 2015, 11am – 4pm University of Westminster, The Boardroom, 309 Regent Street, London Wednesday 1st April sees the official launch event of Digital Folk! Are you a folk artist (i.e. musician, dancer, mummer, crafter, etc.) based in England? Are you interested in digital tools and resources? Have you ever considered the potential impacts […]