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Paper short abstract

In UK folk festivals revival, Morris dancing’s black-painted faces sparked debates over tradition, diversity, and belonging. Fieldwork revealed tensions between preserving heritage, engaging BIPOC awareness, and navigating “white folks” perceptions amid changing social and funding contexts.

Paper long abstract

Folk festivals in the UK, featuring dancing, masks, and processions of mythical characters, offer a lens to examine the contested space of revived ‘folk’ as local and territorial identity. Contemporary folk revivals navigate responding to multicultural and multi-ethnic transformations and sensibilities while preserving elements of heritage sometimes deemed or misperceived as entangled with reactionary or colonial imaginaries (Boyes 1993, Cornish 2016, Irvine 2018). A prominent example is black-painted faces in traditional Morris dancing, practiced widely across the UK, but occasionally stirring controversy, with critics arguing that blackened faces reproduce blackface as the racialised practice of minstrelsy. Organisers and dancers have responded in varied ways: some emphasised historical origins, explaining the use of burnt straw or the need by workers to conceal identities during acts associated with peddling; others modified the practice with alternative face paints, costume changes or by actively promoting the inclusion of Black performers. Drawing on fieldwork at two UK folk festivals, I examine how such sites are contested as “white folks things,” highlighting a tension between organisers engaging with Black awareness and BIPOC discourse and persistent demographic patterns reflecting class and geographic divides, in relation to shifting diversity requirements associated with community and public funding policies. These case studies situate the blackface debate within broader debates over tradition, belonging, and cultural change. Fieldwork reveals that UK folk revival sites have been enacting sustained efforts to enhance diversity, while negotiating the performative boundedness of folk, still affected by situated geographies, discourses, and social networks.