Introducing The Folk Dance Calendar
The English Folk Dance and Song Society is pleased to introduce The Folk Dance Calendar!
How to Create an Event on the Folk Dance Calendar – a brief tutorial prepared in collaboration with the Friends of English Dance
The Folk Dance Calendar helps anyone to start dancing, or to get even more involved than they are already. It gives organisers of folk dances – whether long-established newly instituted – an effective way to reach participants.
As the national organisation for folk dancing, we are committed to introducing people of all backgrounds and ages to the joys of this activity – for social interaction, fun and fitness.
Community-based dancing has been an integral part of the folk scene for generations. This social dancing is actively promoted in a wide range of contexts including educational settings (formal and informal), attached to community-based groups (eg for older people or for asylum seekers), at events such as folk dance clubs, country fairs and street festivals, and many more. The pandemic has brought a further vibrant scene of online-only events, as well as activities which bring together people in their own homes alongside dancers at a venue.
These models are typically highly welcoming to new and diverse participants; but these potential participants can often struggle to find them.
The Folk Dance Calendar aims to make it much easier for anyone to find opportunities to get dancing, according to their location and particular needs.
The calendar is freely available to all, and is integrated within the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s website.
As well as choosing dates and locations, users are able to filter events by a range of other useful criteria. You can choose to see only classes or workshops or participatory dances; or you can select events which have live music or refreshments; or accessible venues; or adults-only or youth-only or for families; or whether the dance is aimed at a particular skill level.
Since the Folk Dance Calendar launched, we have introduced further functions including
- Option to search events text, for example to find all events including the word ‘Playford’
- Ability to search by geographical location when viewing a list of events (as well as when viewing the map)
- An alternative summary (compressed) view of search results
- Dynamic refresh of search results
- Improvements to simplify the submission of multiple events
When the Calendar launched in December 2021, comments included:
‘Excellent news! EFDSS is about to launch an online Dance Calendar. This will help dancers find out about dance events locally and across the country. It builds on our work with Set and Turn Single and we encourage you to try it and offer your feedback. Happy dancing!’ – Chris Turner and Bob Barrett of the website Set and Turn Single
‘It’s really exciting to see EFDSS creating a centralised resource like this, helping grassroots organisers to promote their dances and allowing people to easily find events near them.’ – Lisa Heywood, ceilidh and social folk dance caller
‘My toes are twitching about this new website. Looking forward to getting to more events because I'll be able to find them!’ – Dance instructor Elizabeth Lawson
All dance organisers are invited to submit their events for inclusion. Any events taking place in Britain and/or online will be appropriate for submission, as long as the organiser considers them to be social folk dancing. The calendar will improve further as more data is supplied, so we encourage everyone to get involved.
The Folk Dance Calendar has been made possible with a Cultural Recovery Fund grant from Arts Council England, supported by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Feedback is welcome, and can be sent to [email protected]
Browse The Folk Dance Calendar now
To submit an event, create a free online EFDSS account (if you do not already have one) and then add your event at efdss.org/calendar-events/registration.
