Folk culture is everywhere in Britain. You just have to look for it

Folk culture is all around us. It is hiding in nooks and crannies across Britain just waiting to be discovered. We just have to learn where and what to look for. It can be hard to define what folk is, it is such a vast world filled with such a variety of customs, objects and music that it can be tricky to understand what the defining thread is that connects them all.

In order to try and offer a lead in for those getting interested in folk for the first time I would suggest that anyone considering whether something is ‘folk’ begins by asking a few questions of the object, custom or indeed song they are looking at: Is it made for and of the people of a particular place? Has it been made with a particular locality in mind? And was it made by the human hand?

These questions can help begin to shape what folk is in the 21st century, these are the questions that can tie the threads together. Above anything the defining feature of folk, for me, is that it is of and for the people.

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A few years ago I started taking photographs of church kneelers (the cushions that are used for prayer in churches) and I asked myself the above questions. I found all of them to be true. For me the church kneeler is a wonderful example of a piece of genuine folk art that can be found across Britain, and one which is fast fading as churches are renovated and the kneelers are deemed to be not worthy of keeping.

I felt it was important to record them so that all the time and history that had been poured into them was not lost, and so we could celebrate their merit as folk objects.

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So how can you too go about finding items of lost folk? I have a few helpful hints to get you started. The first is to always look up.

Wandering along most streets in Britain you will find, if you look up, that a whole world of relics from another age will appear – old pub signs, ghostly painted walls from now defunct shops, carved green men and ship’s figureheads.

There are incredible folk objects waiting to be discovered if you just take some time to look. Objects that speak of different narratives to those that might be present in the current landscape of a town, and open up new ways of seeing the places we inhabit on a daily basis.

My second tip would be to speak to people. Get to know your folk community. Find your local Morris side and discover when their next open day or dance out is, and if you feel compelled to, join!

Look up when the town carnival happens and volunteer to help, or sign up to walk in it – to get involved in folk customs is to truly understand them, and without fully immersing yourself in the customs of your village, town or city it is hard to understand why they happen, what they mean to people and what their place is in society.

Thirdly look to the past to inform the present, and by this I mean visit your local library and look for snippets of customs that have died out in the area. These could be things like wassails that once happened in nearby orchards or dancing up the morning sun on May Day at a particular hill or focal point in the vicinity.

These fragments of history can be incredibly helpful in understanding why we celebrate the folk customs we do, like bonfire night or pancake day, and they can also help us revive customs that have fallen out of use. Just this was done in Cornwall where the mid-winter fire custom of Montol was reimagined from historical accounts and reinvented for a modern era, it is now once again firmly embedded in the local community’s seasonal year. 

It is so important that we take time to look and listen, and to understand folk culture. It can teach us about both our past but also about our present and future. It has the potential to help create radical change in our communities; to help us be kinder and more in tune with nature and also with one another. It encourages us to work to together to create something that can be enjoyed by all.

Folk is naturally inclusive; it is for everyone in that no one person has ownership over it – it is of and for the folk. For me this means it has the ability to bring us together in new ways creating unity rather than separation.

The Lost Folk: From the Forgotten Past to the Emerging Future of Folk by Lally MacBeth is out now (Faber & Faber, £20). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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