Nurturing the Shooting Roots of folk

English Dance and Song Winter 2022

This article appears in English Dance and Song, the magazine of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The world’s oldest magazine for folk music and dance, EDS was first published in 1936 and is essential reading for anyone with a passion for folk arts.

Shooting Roots is an inclusive youth folk organisation run by young people for young people. Started at Sidmouth Folk Festival in 1995, the group runs festival workshops for 12-17 year olds in theatre, band, song, craft, dance and storytelling. Kira Browne tells us more.

I’ve been involved with Shooting Roots since I was 15 – and 12 years later, I’m on the core team that runs the organisation.

I met the group as a participant at Sidmouth Folk Festival and I had the best time that first year. My family aren’t folky and we only went to Sidmouth because a family friend suggested it. The year I met Shooting Roots, I discovered that more folk festivals existed and persuaded my family to take me to Towersey, where Shooting Roots also hosted workshops.

All this encouraged me to join the Folk Society at university and then become a Shooting Roots tutor, because I’m passionate about sharing the awesomeness of folk with young people so they can have the same magical experience I did.

Shooting Roots had a major impact on my confidence, when confidence doesn’t always come easily to teenagers. The workshops are as inclusive as possible, open to anyone aged 12-17, regardless of skill level or background, and I felt immediately welcomed into a new community. Through their workshops, as a participant and tutor, I’ve made a solid group of friends who are still some of my closest. We have even travelled to different countries to see each other.

One event that stands out has to be the 25th anniversary party that we organised at Sidmouth Folk Festival in 2019. With party hats and face paint, crazy games of lemon jousting and Danish clapping, reminiscing over old photos and plenty of music and laughter, we had a massive turnout and a great atmosphere. To top it all off, I led everyone in singing Country Life, a song I learnt through Shooting Roots – without Shooting Roots, there is no way I would have had the confidence to sing it in front of so many people. One of the tutors from my first year as a participant was there too and both of us felt very proud that things had come full circle.

This summer, we were super excited to get back to a full programme of festival workshops after Covid interruptions. It is always an absolute joy to work with such a wonderful group of enthusiastic tutors and to see the incredible creations the participants come up with in such a short time. This year, we reintroduced storytelling workshops and were so proud to see our participants lead a story-round on the last day. We share youth workshops with the choir Stream of Sound and it has been great to see this relationship strengthen over the years. We’re currently looking to expand to be involved in more festivals – so festival organisers, please get in touch if you’re interested.

Find out more about Shooting Roots at shootingroots.org