The F word

I spent a day at the Folklore Society's annual conference yesterday . I couldn't sign up for the whole weekend, but I decided a day was better than not going. I am not a member of the Folklore Society, though I follow them on social media. There were familiar faces there, Simon Heywood and Julia Bishop, tutors on my MA course just over ten years ago. I met some people whose work I have admired over the years too, Jaqueline Simpson and David Clarke.I also met new contacts and look forward to keeping in touch with them. I was intrigued and inspired by the papers and presentations, relating some of them to my own areas of knowledge and research. As I listened to the ongoing discussion about collaboration, the lack of academic recognition of folklore and folklife studies, and the future hopes for research and recognition, I realised how lucky I am. I was an undergraduate at Leeds, able to specialise in Folk Life Studies as part of my English degree. There was a Dialect Studies Department within the school of English too. Both had world class reputations and staff, Stewart Sanderson, Tony Green, Stanley Ellis.I then went on to do a diploma in Local History, using oral history as an approach to researching a particular community and way of life as part of my work with Manchester Studies. Just over ten years ago I signed up for an MA in Folklore and Cultural Tradition with NATCECT, based at the University of Sheffield. NATCECT was the National Centre for English Culture and Tradition. It too has closed down, unable to convince the powers that be that there is value in this kind of academic research. Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Archaeology, History - all these overlap with Folk Life Studies. But it is dangerous to mention the F word if you want to be taken seriously as an academic. It's a different situation in Ireland and Scandinavian countries apparently. Here there's a new awareness and interest in folk lore in the art world, including last year's Tate Britain exhibition and Jeremy Deller's work. There were archaeologists at the conference, wishing that they could have studied folklore as part of their course. My daughter studied archaeology at Sheffield when NATCECT was still there, and she had that opportunity. Historians talked about oral history as a bridge between the two disciplines of folklore and history. I felt I had been one of those who had started to build that bridge back in the 1970s, but I didn't realise the possibilities. I do think of myself as a folklorist and I realise it colours the way I look at life and culture on a day to day level. I'm not scared of using the F word.