Cat's Calling Academy
This project started in March 2010 with a very successful calling workshop lead by Cat Kelly, Roger Watson, Will Hall and Simon Care. All those who attended had a chance to discuss ideas and techniques and call a dance. Leading on from this workshop, the 2010-11 season’s callers were mentored by Cat. They were Andy Mussell, Jane Bird, Hannah Bright, Lisa Heywood, Steph Tait, Sarah Malleson and Aiden Hansell.
The Calling Academy sparked a lot of interest, and has been featured in several publications including EDS, Set & Turn Single, Shirefolk, Unicorn, Shreds and Patches and Folk Monthly. Partly in response to Oxfolk’s initiative, the caller Mo Waddington has set up a callers’ forum on the Internet and she ran a callers’ workshop at Chester Folk Festival this year. At Chippenham Folk Festival, Mike Courthold programmed specialist workshops including a rare chance to learn patter calling and Cat ran Calling Academy workshops Sidmouth FolkWeek 2010. It is good to think that Oxfolk is part of a wider community of people that realise the importance of developing new callers and providing forums in which to try out new ideas.
Thanks go to all those who have helped to make this possible: those mentioned above, all who have attended the workshops and very many other helpful friends, advisers, musicians and magazine editors. We are only sorry that Roger Watson, who has been so supportive of the Calling Academy, was not able to play for Oxfolk with English Compass as we originally planned, following his retirement due to ill health.
Funding to make this project possible has been provided by Grassroots Grants through Oxfordshire Community Foundation.
There have been many requests to continue this project in some form in the future. Look out for more news.