In 2007 the English Folk Dance and Song Society will be celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the merger between the English Folk Dance Society and the Folk Song Society.  The Society has used this unique opportunity to produce a vignette of the Society’s past, present and future in the form of a commemorative anniversary calendar for 2007.  This engagement calendar, measuring 320 mm x 175 mm, has been sponsored by members and groups affiliated to the Society who have provided significant dates in their personal folk history, as well as dates of forthcoming events in 2007.  Thus we have a record of some of Cecil Sharp’s lectures and demonstrations, formation dates of some of the Society’s earliest branches, birthdays and special anniversaries of some groups, and events, dances and festivals for 2007.

Each month has a monochrome tear off postcard at the foot of the page, depicting historical events and people.  The pictures are examples of the many photographs held within the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library and the images range from Sharp’s original demonstration team dancing in the Memorial Gardens at Stratford, the Folk Centre at le Havre during World War I where troops were taught sword and morris dancing as part of rehabilitation programmes, children being entertained by a Hooden Horse at Sidmouth, Lucy Broadwood, to the Spinners and Newcastle Kingsmen at the Royal Albert Hall.  Smaller monochrome and colour photographs on the cover and throughout the calendar depict Sharp, members of the Kimber family, Spiers and Boden, Waterson and Carthy and many others in the rich folk world that forms part of the English culture.