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Organisations like YFA should never be distant or anonymous. Despite our natural shyness, we thought that we ought to let you know who we are.
Martin Bull, chair (from Jan 2006)
Martin has been a dancer and musician since the late 1960s. He plays anglo-concertina, single-row melodeon, bouzouki, bodhran and guitar, and is just learning to play the Border and Scottish smallpipes.
He has been involved in several folk clubs, as "floor musician" and committee member and, since the early 1980s, has also been heavily involved in running Whitby Folk Week, the country's largest traditional music festival.
In his day job, he leads a design and publications department and has extensive marketing, purchasing, management and IT experience, in addition to knowledge and skills in the field of print and design. In his spare time(!) he's a bosun's mate and watch leader for the Jubilee Sailing Trust, the only organisation in the world to take disabled people to sea on its purpose built square-rigged sailing ships.
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Sue Coe, secretary
Sue recently retired from her role as a Community Education Officer and is a qualified teacher and Ofsted inspector with over 20 years teaching experience. She is now developing her work as a dancer and dance teacher and has a part-time job as the co-ordinator of the Halifax Traditions Festival. She has been funding officer for Ryburn 3 Step since it was formed in 1991 and has been Folk Music adviser to Arts Council Yorkshire since 1989. She is a dance caller with The Herb Boys (which include Vic Gammon) and Sweet Liberty (which includes Gina le Faux) ceilidh bands and is a member of Ryburn Longsword and Sharpe
Sword Rapper dance teams.
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Jim Hancock, treasurer (from January 2006)
A folk club, festival and concert organiser since the 1960s, Jim appears with the shanty group Roaring Forties, with the duo Clarty Sough and with the recently formed trio The Penny Waits. Winner of the BBC Radio Lincolnshire songwriting award for 2001 and, with Clarty Sough, the MU best live performance trophy. His songs have been recorded by other artists and his ballad opera Icebound is regularly performed at maritime events.
Long time member and for ten years organiser of traditional mummers team Coleby Plough Jag, and former Armitage Mummer.
Under the banner of Guestlist Jim edits and publishes Folktalk magazine, covering Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire and the nationally distributed Guestlist Folk Performers directory, together with web design and internet marketing for performers and events.
Beyond the folk world he acts as internet marketing consultant to a wider client base including the visual and performing arts, tourism and manufacturing industry. An experienced and highly qualified ex teacher, he still undertakes the occasional workshop or lecture.
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Malcolm Douglas, webmaster
Malcolm is a freelance illustrator among other things, specialising in highly-finished cartoon strips using traditional and digital techniques. He designed and runs the YFA website, and administers the extensive South Riding Folk Arts Network site, also editing and designing their quarterly newsletter, South Riding Folk Arts Network News. A former folk club and session organiser (and current member of the new Sheffield Folk Festival team), he's also involved in traditional music both as a player of various instruments —chiefly fiddle— and as a student of the subject: his revised edition of The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs was published in December 2003 by The English Folk Dance and Song Society, as Classic English Folk Songs. He designed the new website for the Folk Music Journal, and has recently finished a web-based edition of Reminiscences of Horsham, the memoirs of the traditional singer Henry Burstow, which was originally published in 1912. The next publishing project will be revised and expanded editions of Frank Purslow's 1960s-70s selections from the Hammond-Gardiner folksong collections; again for EFDSS.
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Damien Barber, treasurer (to January 2006)
Damien is a professional musician, and was a finalist in BBC Radio 2's "Young Tradition Award" in 1989. His musical roots lie mainly in his native Norfolk, which is evident in his distinctive vocal style, although he was also brought up with Scottish and Irish influences. His mother Sheena was a highland dancer, his uncle a piper, and his great grandmother was recorded singing many traditional Irish songs.
In 1988 he began playing the English concertina primarily to accompany his singing which he now uses as the base for his performances. In November 1991 he recorded his first solo album Blass Me, and later that year he was asked to record an unaccompanied song for the compilation album Voices, produced by Fellside Records. He also plays C#/D Button accordion, guitar and melodeon.
He is in great demand as a performer, and, along with the development of The Demon Barbers, work with Fay Hield and more recently Mike Wilson, has established him as one of the most respected performers of folk music in England today.
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Pete Hayselden
Pete (Shanty Jack) joins us as of January 2006: details to follow.
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Julia Pollock (from January 2006)
Julia starting singing in South London folk clubs when she was 14. After 3 years in Lancaster studying psychology with education, she moved to North Lincolnshire to work as an arts marketing consultant, with clients including the Arts Council, Lincolnshire & Humberside Arts, Oldham Coliseum Theatre, Hull Truck Theatre Company and Great Eastern Stage. As an organiser of Scunthorpe Folk Song Club in the 1980s she directed and sang in the Northern premiere of Peter Bellamy's The Transports. A former dancer with Tatterfoals Morris, Julia was a founder member of Bootleggers Appalachian Dancers and currently writes their dances and teaches and leads the team. She has run highly successful workshops and performances at Beverley, Cleethorpes and Brigg Festivals, Ethno England and a wide range of local events.
Julia starting teaching psychology and health & social care in further education in 1988, and combines this with curriculum management at John Leggott Sixth Form College, and training in quality assurance and effective learning. She is a secondary school governor; and still sings occasionally with guitarist Geoff Levoguer and runs the Roots to Music club in Scunthorpe which provides a stage for acoustic musicians from all backgrounds. She has taught singing to adults at Gainsborough Festival and to kids at Sidmouth Festival, and although she does more dancing than singing these days, still thinks of herself as a part-time singer who can dance a little bit and loves to teach.
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Kathy Aveyard
Kathy trained as a classical musician playing piano and violin before progressing through choral music to amateur operatics. She has been involved in folk music for over 20 years, and was one of a group of people who revived Uxbridge Folk Club, becoming secretary to the committee for four years.
She has now been one of the key organisers of Cleckheaton Folk Festival for 12 of its 16 years and has experience of most aspects of organising a club or a festival, as well as being a singer in her own right.
For the last 25 years she has been Membership Secretary to the South Tynedale Railway Preservation Society. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and has a wide range of management and administration skills, many of which have proved invaluable in her voluntary work for the Folk world.
Due to other commitments, Kathy is taking a back seat for the time being, but remains with YFA as a consultant.
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Paul Hudson, chair (2001-2005)
Paul is a dance musician, playing melodeon with Morris, step-dance and ceilidh bands. A choral singer (Royal Choral Society, Bradford Festival Choral Society), he trained as a classical pianist and organist, but prefers the inventiveness and freedom of the folk tradition. Day jobs for many years have been in business consultancy and project management; most recently working in economic and community development in the Yorkshire Dales.
Paul and his wife are now taking a year out from it all, touring around festivals and so on at home and abroad. They will be keeping in touch, and we hope to drag Paul (even if kicking and screaming) back onto the team when he returns, wanderlust assuaged.
paul@yorkshire-folk-arts.com
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Graham Pirt
Previously headteacher, then Education Adviser in Doncaster; later Senior Education Adviser for North Yorkshire. Currently an independent education consultant for schools and local education authorities throughout the county and beyond. specialising in management structure and techniques over and beyond the normal educational aspects.
Long involvement in folk organisation, including a period in the 80's running Whitby Folk Week with Trevor Stone and Grahame Binless. Graham has been singing in folk clubs since the early 1960s, and has been with Cockersdale since 1987. He still appears as a solo performer, runs song and voice workshops at songshop and performs with his son Sam Pirt, with whom he is also working on ETHNO England.
Due to the extent of his other commitments, Graham is no longer able to serve on the management team, but keeps in touch as an occasional consultant.
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Jacey Bedford, development worker (2002-2003)
Jacey is originally a librarian working in local government, but since 1989 she has been a full-time performer with the trio Artisan, performing across the UK, Europe, America, Canada and Australia. She founded the internet performer's networking group Britfolk and the uk-wide folk business networking group Folkbiz-uk. She runs a folk agency, a folk venue and a festival which includes folk in its programming. She presents folk business workshops for performers and is thoroughly conversant with the business disciplines of folk arts.
Jacey has now completed her year's contract with YFA, which was funded by Arts Council Yorkshire. She continues to do all the other things listed above, and is additionally available as a freelance development worker and administrator.
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