Next FASH Event

The next FASH event will be at Durley Memorial Hall SO32 2AD on the 15th December. This will be our "Winter Gathering", which is not a workshop but a day of mainly dance with some musical interludes and featuring many of our local callers and musicians. The afternoon's activites will include a Mummers' play, and all for half the normal price for our workshops. See our flyer here.

Full details of our '24/'25 season of workshops can be found on our 'Workshops' page, and a flyer listing them all can be downloaded here.

If you are not already on our FASH Supporters circulation list and would like to receive news of our events, please contact Daphne on info@fash.org.uk or phone 01243 531497.

We are aware that Covid has recently become more prevalent, so our document 'FASH Workshops and Covid19' is unfortunately still relevant. It details the precautions we take and what we ask you to do to protect other people.

Elizabeth Haigh - Memorial Service 25th January 2025

A Thanksgiving Service for Elizabeth's life will be held in St Peter's Church, Bishop's Waltham at 2pm on Saturday 25th January and there will be a reception afterwards in the Church Hall at 3pm. The family ask people not to wear black, as they think this would have been Elizabeth's wish.
Many of you will have known Elizabeth, who ruled the kitchen at FASH workshops for many years and made delicious soup for us. She died peacefully in her sleep in the early hours of Saturday 23rd November, having suffered a severe stroke 4 months previously.

Please be aware that Salisbury Folk Dance Club have returned to their previous 'home' at St. Martin's School, Shady Bower, Salisbury, SP1 2RG. Same day, same time, of course.

Note that Solent Folk Dance Club are now holding their Christmas Party on the 17th December, not on the 10th, as previously shown in the diaries. An extra evening of dance!

Please note that the Woolston and Bursledon Folk Club's concert with Brian Hooper on the 24th November has been postponed to January 12th. The next singaround will be on December 8th.

If you are proposing to go to SusFA's dance workshop with Ivan Aitken on the 24th November, please note that it will now take place at Colwood House, Warninglid, RH17 5SP, not at Pulborough Village Hall. Numbers are limited, so if you would like to go, contact Janet on 01243 265010. Barrie Bullimore's workshop on the 29th December will be at Pulborough as usual.

A reminder that Winchester Shape Note Singing has moved from Thursdays to Tuesdays. Now 2nd and 4th Tuesdays, contact Nigel Bowley winchestersns@aol.com for more details.

If you prefer contra-style dances, we have our local Solent Contra Dances with Barrie Bullimore calling. They are on the second Wednesday of the month at Shawford Parish Hall - details in the Dance Diary. The next one will be in September.

Have a look also at The London Barndance Company's website. They are again running live dances, mainly at Cecil Sharp House. All the dates and callers/bands are given on the LBC website; the dances can be found on the EFDSS website, which is the easiest way to buy tickets in advance (£15, members £13).

The regular contra dances at Egham (Ashford Folk Dance Club) have also restarted. These are afternoon sessions on the second Sunday of the month. More details here. These two contra sessions tend to be on the two days of the same week-end, and sometimes one caller leads both events.

A comparatively new website is now on-line: Friends of English Dance are putting together a directory of dance clubs, callers and bands/musicians to replace the well-established one, now no longer available, of "Set and Turn Single". If you run a dance club, are a caller or part of a band, do consider adding yourself/your club/your band to the site - it will take a while to collect all the information, but if everyone adds their own part it will soon grow.

Also on the site, you can find resources for dancers, callers and musicians, including videos, particularly for those new to English Country Dance, of many of the basic dance figures.

We have added a link on the 'Solent Waves' page to the 'Solent Waves' archive. All issues right back to number one have been scanned in and saved as pdfs. The most recent ones are in full colour, issues a bit further back are in black and white and issues prior to November 2013 are in greyscale as they were printed in blue.

Focsle Music now meets only at The Guide Dog - no more "Welly". For all the details see the Focsle website and their Facebook page. They have reintroduced the 'Live on the Lawn' sessions - more details on the website as the venue changes each time. Even with all these 'live' meetings, Focsle is still running the Wednesday Zoom sessions, although these are now on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month. If you would like to be kept fully up-to-date, e-mail Lin and ask to be added to their mailing list.

The English Folk Dance and Song Society, EFDSS, has its full programme on-line now. Many song and dance workshops are included. See www.efdss.org and go to their 'What's on' page, or use this link www.efdss.org/whats-on to find out what is taking place in the coming months and to book tickets. Clicking on one of the headings in red you will find mainly what is taking place at Cecil Sharp House: gigs, workshops and dances separately. To see what dance events members of EFDSS have asked to be posted on the website, go to www.efdss.org/calendar-events, or click on the heading "The Folk Dance Calendar" in black. This part of the website has taken over some of what used to be the on-line calendar of "Set and Turn Single".