Access Folk Small Project Grants: Research Methods, Tools, and Timelines

Access Folk is a research project exploring ways to increase and diversify participation in folk singing in England. Like many in the arts, the folk scene is facing hardship because the impacts of covid-19 and the current economic climate are affecting venues, organisers, amateur and professional singers and audience members alike. These issues, combined with the ageing of many of the scene’s key activists, raises questions about how the folk singing scene in England might develop over the coming decades. At University of Sheffield, a team of academic and community partners are looking into the current problems and testing potential solutions. The five-year project (2022-2027) hopes to prompt action to help increase accessibility to folk singing for more diverse populations in England.

This submission is one of two related documents that describe 1) the methodology for the action research phases of the Access Folk research project (doi: 10.15131/shef.data.29369831), and 2) the derived tools and workflows.

The Research Methods, Tools, and Workflows lists the tools, templates, and workflows developed to support the Access Folk Small Project Grants, alongside brief explanatory notes. The tools are divided into sections that map to project stage and function. These are:

- Recruitment (including the Call for applications, Application questions, Application evaluation tools, Collaboration agreements and addendums)

- Project Planning (including Induction meeting planner, Change goals template, Persona activity, Failspace rubric, Timeline planner, and Research methods planner)

- Informed consent and data sharing (including approaches to consent, template information sheets, template consent forms)

- Media sharing and licensing (including Journey checklist, Guidelines for media sharing, Data tracker, and Licensing and Third Party Consent agreement templates)

- Data collection (including Reflection questions, Participant feedback templates and protocols, Ethnographic observation prompts)

- Networking events

This research was approved by the University of Sheffield ethical review process: 056800

All the available items arising from the project are available in the Access Folk Collection.