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Publicly funded or charity organisations concerned with supporting, preserving and promoting folk arts commonly use digital tools and platforms to further their reach and maximise their impact. These include basic websites, the use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook to create groups and communities online, or the development of YouTube channels, digital radio programmes and podcasts to promote activities and encourage discussion. Many of these organisations are also responsible for, or concerned with, physical collections of recordings, texts, photographs, manuscripts and ephemera. Before the digital age these collections would need to visited in person, often only by specialist researchers. Through various processes such as scanning, photographing, transcribing and transferring these physical archives can be represented online and access by the public. The large online public initiatives can and are used by all forms of folk arts participants to varying degrees. These resources include the likes of Full English Archive, the Single Gloucester project, etc…

The Digital Folk project will culminate in a report aimed particularly at the creators of these sorts of resources, in order to share with these ‘third sector’ organisations what we have learned about the ways in which participants engage with their respective collections and sites. In particular, we hope that our research will assist in shaping the design of future digital platforms, projects and initiatives to meet the needs and inclinations of their target participants.