Rolling On
Emerging themes from the sessions and singarounds project 2018-2023
Abstract
‘Rolling On’ is a national touring project looking at the health of sessions and singarounds throughout the UK. Starting in 2018, a small team from the weekly session at the Plough and Fleece community pub in Horningsea, Cambridge started to venture further afield to experience at first hand what was going on. The session host and present author, Tony Phillips had won a songwriting competition with Rolling On, telling the story of community singing in local pubs since the 1700’s, the period in which the Plough and Fleece was built. Members of the Plough and Fleece session group have subsequently visited 234 different sessions and singarounds as at August 2023 from the lowlands of Scotland to the south coast of England, collecting stories from attendees as they go, adding a selection of stories, videos and interviews to the website.
This paper identifies several key themes emerging from the project including discussions on the difference between performance and song-sharing, the role of hospitality, age and ethnicity; and the paradigm of an established tradition of folksong and the creation of an emerging tradition through the inclusion of new writing and contemporary song.
The projects methodology is rooted firmly in the participant-observer tradition with the addition of duly accredited data sources and self-submitted personal stories submitted to the website by session and singaround attendees.
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