[ivfdf-news] IVFDF Bristol 2011

Gavin Skinner fds_gavin at yahoo.com
Tue Jun 29 21:43:53 BST 2010


Dear IVFDF News mailing list subscriber,

Next year the Inter-Varsity Folk Dance Festival returns to Bristol for the first time since 1957, to celebrate IVFDF's 60th Anniversary.

IVFDF Bristol 2011 will be held from the 25th to 27th February at the University of Bristol Students' Union in the heart of Clifton.

We're busy putting together plans for a fantastic weekend which we hope will celebrate the legacy of the UK's longest running national folk festival; and at the same time look forward to a thriving future.

The current line-up includes dances with Tickled Pink, Trinculo, The Molecatchers, The Dalriada Scottish Country Dance Band and a contra dance with The Bristol Players. We're also planning a full programme of workshops, sessions, concerts, a display ceilidh and a morris tour. The ceilidhs are being organised by Phil Bassindale,  IVFDF 2011 president, who will be calling for the dance with Trinculo on Friday Night.

As well as it being IVFDF's birthday; it will also be the 60th Anniversary of Bristol Morris Men, who started out as a University morris dance side; and the 30th Anniversary of Rag Morris; the current Bristol University morris dance side. Members of both sides, some of whom also dance for Bristol's "supergroup"  Nonesuch Morris, make up the IVFDF 2011 organising committee. It's also going to be the 100th anniversary of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, EFDSS; who will be helping out with the festival too, so between us we'll be celebrating 250 years of dancing!

As it's the first IVFDF in some time that's being organised almost exclusively by a bunch of Morris Dancers we're hoping to make the morris tour a bit special. As usual, there is an open invitation to university-based morris and rapper sides from across the country to join us on the tour, and to any other sides who'd like to be involved.  For instance, we met up with former members of the long-disbanded University side, Bath City Morris at their summer reunion earlier this month. A suggestion that they may like to meet up again to dance on the morris tour at IVFDF in Bristol next year was greeted with some enthusiasm. Perhaps there may an opportunity for other currently inactive university morris dance sides to get together for an IVFDF reunion? If you might be able to suggest sides or help out with this, please let us know.

We're also planning to mark the 60th Anniversary of the Festival with an event or two that will be some kind of retrospective of IVFDFs past. We're working with John Brown, the IVFDF archivist, to add some more details to the IVFDF archive, for instance by making this an opportunity to record stories of previous festivals for posterity. If we can make this a bit of a reunion event as well, then we'd have a wealth of IVFDF experience to call upon. This festival belongs to all of the member societies from across the country so we'd like to involve as many people as possible.

However whether it's going to be your fifth or twentieth IVFDF or just your first then it's still going to be a weekend to remember!

Now, I'm sure you're all wondering, "How can I help?".

Two of the many things we're concentrating on at the moment are publicity and sponsorship.

If you have any ideas for helping to publicise IVFDF then please contact us. It would be useful for IVFDF to be mentioned to people early (and often!) so that it can become a fixture in the calendar, especially if travelling to Bristol might require a bit of planning,

For instance, if you're in a student folk dance society, and your university has a student newspaper or website who might be interested in society-related news; perhaps you could submit an article based on the IVFDF 60th Anniversary, with special reference to how your society or university has been involved in attending or running IVFDF over the last 60 years? There is a press release on the "downloads" section of our website at http://www.ivfdf2011.org that you could use to base your article on. You could also use the opportunity to promote any freshers week events or beginners sessions at the start of next term. If you're a student but you're not aware of there being a folk dance society where you study then perhaps you could write an article suggesting that there could or should be - and tell people about the national student folk festival at the same time? Or if you have connections with any other non-student / regional folk newsletters or websites
 then perhaps you could put something together yourself, or even just send in the press release?

If you get anything like this on-line then please send us a link and we'll link back.

We're currently busy submitting applications for festival sponsorship to help us expand the festival into other venues and put on more events. We've delighted to be able to announce festival sponsorship by the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and the University of Bristol Alumni Foundation; and support of the Scottish Country Dance by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. We have a number of other applications ongoing. If you have any further ideas for organisations who have previously helped IVFDFs then please let us know.


For further information about the festival, please visit:

http://www.ivfdf2011.org/

http://en-gb.facebook.com/ivfdfbristol2011

http://www.twitter.com/ivfdf2011


The website is going to be upgraded over the summer with further details of what's happening, and details of how to order tickets, so please check back as and when you can.


In the meantime, have a great summer, and if you bump into members of Rag Morris or Nonesuch at any folk festivals or other events then please say hello!


Best wishes

Gavin Skinner.

IVFDF Bristol 2011



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