Integrating and Engaging with the J. M. Carpenter Collection of Traditional Song and Drama as part of the Vaughan Williams Library's Digital Archive

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The project will integrate the catalogue data and digitised resources of the J. M. Carpenter collection of traditional song and drama into the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library's (VWML) digital archive (currently known as The Full English). The Carpenter collection contains a wealth of folk songs, folk plays and other folk arts items, mostly gathered in England and Scotland in the period 1929-35 and including many early sound recordings. It has been little used for research or performance due to its accessibility.This long-awaited project capitalises on its having already been catalogued and digitised and takes the opportunity to embed it within the VVWML's digital archive, already establised as a world-leading English-language folk arts resource. It will make the collection freely and internationally available to schools and their communities, young musicians, music tutors, folk arts enthusiasts, amateur and professional performers, researchers outside the academy, communities local to the places where the collection was made, contributor descendants, special interest groups (e.g. maritime heritage), arts, culture and heritage organisations, community groups and media. It will also enable cross searching with (currently) 22 other folk arts collections, to which it has many relationships in terms of items, forms, people, dates and places.The Carpenter project team will work with the English Folk Dance and Song Society and the Elphinstone Institute, folk performers, tutors and contributor descendants to introduce the collection to a wide range of audiences with an interest in the folk arts and to promote it as an artistic and historical resource. This will result in discovery, supplementary information and knowledge exchange, creative responses such as performance, composition, artwork and writing, re-patriation of songs with the families of those who contributed them, and a coach tour of the landscape and communities which nurtured their performance in the 1930s.The resulting resource will also go on to complement the Carpenter project team's forthcoming critical edition of the collection.