The recent revival of popular interest in folklore, from calendar customs to folk horror media, demonstrates that individual and community identities are interwoven with the perceived concept of Englishness, expressed throughout mainstream media, social media platforms and podcasts.
However, diversity of the content and the wider cultural context have yet to be captured or understood within the multiple identities that make up multicultural Englishness today.
The National Folklore Survey aims to capture an accurate snapshot of the folklore of multicultural England, producing new knowledge, insights and understanding of contemporary English folk culture at a time when many individuals and communities in England feel what historian and broadcaster David Olusoga calls ‘a conflicted sense of identity’.
In this presentation, coming just before the official release of the survey results, project team Dr David Clarke, Dr Diane Rodgers and Dr Sophie Parkes-Nield will talk about the history of surveying beliefs and folklore in England, how the survey came about and how it was put together.
