Professor Fay Hield
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
Professor of Ethnomusicology
Full contact details
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
Jessop Building
Leavygreave Road
¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ
S3 7RD
- Profile
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I have made, thought about and organised music to varying degrees my whole life. While I imagined that one day I’d get a proper job, singing in the pub has miraculously come together as a career.
It all began at Bacca Pipes Folk Club joining in choruses, then nannying for touring musicians gave me insights into this performance context and ‘music industry’. When the ‘Folk Degree’ started at Newcastle University in 2004 I jumped, mainly to critique how they thought they could teach this stuff, but the academic bug got me, and I now spend a lot of time asking why folk music is important to people, and trying out different ways of doing it.
I completed my PhD ‘English Folk Singing and the Construction of Community’ in 2010 and started teaching in 2011. I record and tour with my band and special projects like The Full English and Modern Fairies. I have a passion for making the experience of traditional music widely accessible. This is mainly done through organising events under the banner of Soundpost, an organisation advocating educational and entertaining folk music activities.
- Research interests
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Current projects
Access Folk Project
Dr Fay Hield is leading a team of academics and community partners to work together to identify the current problems and test out potential solutions in an ambitious 5 year long research project to increase and diversify participation in English folk singing. Funded by UKRI Future leaders fellowship.
is built on co-production principles where the people affected have real power to direct the research and will trial and evaluate new approaches in collaboration with the wider folk singing scene.
Website:
Email: accessfolk@sheffield.ac.uk
Social Media: @AccessFolk
Tel: 0114 2220466Modern Fairies
Focussing on the story-world of British folk-tales, Modern Fairies explores how this material can be re-mediated to be made relevant to modern audiences. The research surfaces the experience of 12 artists, writers and musicians responding to archival material exploring how they relate to the stories and what new works are generated. We also invite audiences to engage with the works-in-process and examine how this feeds into artistic production. [http://www.modernfairies.co.uk/]
Folk Club Culture
Working with Paul Mansfield, we are exploring common themes in our research into English folk clubs producing a series of articles exploring social discipline, repertoire formation, and barriers to participation.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Musics Lost and Found: Song Collectors and the Life and Death of Folk Tradition. FOLK MUSIC JOURNAL, 12(3), 136-137.
- Musics Lost and Found: Song Collectors and the Life and Death of Folk Tradition Michael Church. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2021. xv + 294 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. Discography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-783-27607-3 (hbk). Folk Music Journal, 12(3), 136-137.
- . Ethnomusicology Forum, 28(3), 338-361.
- 'I realised it was the same song': Familiarisation, assimilation and making meaning with new folk music. International Journal of Traditional Arts, 2.
- ‘Old Adam was the first man formed’: (In)forming and investigating listeners’ experiences of new music as audience enrichment, public engagement and research. Participations, 14(1), 285-312.
Chapters
- , Music and Heritage (pp. 56-64). Routledge
- (pp. 51-64). Bristol University Press
- , Heritage as Community Research (pp. 51-64). Policy Press
- , Heritage as Community Research (pp. 51-64). Policy Press
- , Heritage as Community Research (pp. 51-64). Policy Press
- Creativity and Community in an Entrepreneurial Undergraduate Music Module In Haddon E & Burnard P (Ed.), Creative Teaching for Creative Learning in Higher Music Education (pp. 227-239). Abingdon: Routledge.
- Tastes, Ties and Social Space: Exploring ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ’s Folk Singing World In Crossley N, McAndrew S & Widdop P (Ed.), Social Networks and Music Worlds (pp. 189-216). London: Routledge.
- Negotiating participation in an English Singing Session In Russell I & Ingram C (Ed.), Taking Part in Music: Case Studies in Ethnomusicology (pp. 99-120). Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Book reviews
- Harry Upton. FOLK MUSIC JOURNAL, 11(2), 89-91.
- Musics Lost and Found: Song Collectors and the Life and Death of Folk Tradition. FOLK MUSIC JOURNAL, 12(3), 136-137.