The Full English

The Full English was a 7 piece band commissioned by the English Folk Dance and Song Society to work with materials in their Full English web portal, housing 58,000 scans of field data and diaries from some of the most important folk music, song and dance collectors of the early 19th century. The group took these archive materials as the starting point for creating new performance pieces. These are related to varying degrees to the original texts, with new material composed, and interpretation playing a strong part of bringing paper based music back to life.

This performance-based project ran concurrently with the Transmitting Musical Heritage research. Some of the musicians were involved in both projects, and throughout the year, it became evident how much resonance the TMH project had with the Full English practical application. These links were more deeply explored at the AHRC Connected Communities Festival 2014, where the musicians reflected on their experiences of the project.