Interview with Simon Costin, founder of The Museum of British Folklore.
by Mike HankinOctober 2025
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I spoke to Simon about what “folk” really means today, from the new wave of artists and festivals which are redefining it, to the challenge of celebrating our shared heritage culture without slipping into nostalgia. He, as was expected, painted a rather special of a culture that’s anything but frozen in time. Folk that is adaptive, inclusive, and very, very much alive.
Mike: We love The Museum of British Folklore and I know we’re not the only ones. it’s become a bit of a touchstone for people interested in folk culture and a destination in the latest folk revival. What are its main aims today?
Simon: Thank you, I’m delighted to hear that! We are no different from most museums in a way, as we look to collect, document, archive and conserve artefacts, costumes, manuscripts, oral histories, and visual art related to British seasonal folk customs and events. We will also be looking to ensure regional and cultural diversity is represented and to promote understanding of the historical, social, and cultural significance of folklore within British life.
We want to highlight that folklore is a living, evolving part of British culture rather than something confined to the past. The difference between most traditional museums and us, is that we don’t operate from the top down. We are very much aware that it is the people who have the knowledge and the artefacts, which we are allowed to interpret and exhibit within the many exhibitions that we’ve mounted over the past sixteen years.
Mike: The word ‘folk’ gets used for all sorts of things now, and the more interested people become, inevitably music, craft, lifestyle all get labelled some form of ‘folk’. How do you define it, and what makes something truly ‘folk’ in your eyes?
Simon: Everyone has their own definition of what folklore is or what makes something folkloric but broadly I would say that something is considered folkloric when it relates to, originates from, or embodies the traditions, beliefs, stories, customs, and creative expressions of a community or culture, typically passed down orally or through practice rather than written records. So, something is folkloric not just because it’s “old” or “traditional,” but because it lives within the collective cultural practice of a people, continually reshaped by and for the community. This makes it something that is often difficult to define as it can mean different things to different groups of people.
Mike: We’re in the middle of another big wave of interest in folk culture. How does this one feel compared with earlier revivals?
Simon: There is most definitely a revival of interest and compared to earlier revivals, say, the late Victorian/Edwardian folk song movement (Cecil Sharp, Lucy Broadwood), the postwar revival of the 1950s–70s (Ewan MacColl, Shirley Collins, the Watersons), or the “nu-folk” moment of the 2000s (Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons), the current revival feels markedly different in tone and motivation. The earlier revivals often framed folk culture as a way to “preserve” a disappearing, often rural, “authentic” England. The current revival seems less about preservation and more about reclamation and reinterpretation, making space for queer, feminist, diasporic, and regional voices that were historically sidelined.
Artists like Sam Lee, Stick in the Wheel, Angeline Morrison, and Broadside Hacks are explicitly rethinking what “the folk” means and who it belongs to. Rather than treating folk as a sealed archive, today’s revivalists mix it freely with electronic music, ambient soundscapes, drone, and experimental forms. That openness recalls the psych-folk of the 1970s, but with a sharper political and historical awareness.
Folk culture now often serves as a way to grapple with post-Brexit identity, ecological crisis, and the loss of community. It’s not nostalgic in a simple sense, it’s about re-rooting rather than retreating. This current revival doesn’t yearn for the past. Instead, it reimagines it, turning folklore into a space where history, identity, and experimentation intersect. It’s inclusive, hybrid, and alive and very much a folk culture for our time I feel.
Mike: Are there any artists, collectives or projects that you’re particularly excited by?
Simon: It’s hard for me to say at the moment as things are still growing and developing. I love what Folklore Tapes do. They were very much ahead of the curve when they started out fifteen years ago. Instagram has led to the formation of many online groups that have gone on to develop into face to face meetings, workshops and talks. Stone Club, Weird Walk and the great Neoancients festival, the East Anglian Folklore Centre and the wonderful exhibitions and events showcased by Field System in Ashburton all spring to mind. There are many artists now taking elements of folklore to create work such as Lucy Wright, Dan Bloodworth, Charlotte Thomson-Morley, Ben Edge, Maya Gurung-Russell Campbell and Ella Garvey, the list goes on and on. There’s also the new film directed by Rob Curry and Tim Plester looking at the life of my dear friend, the folklore archivist, Doc Rowe.
Doc was instrumental with helping me when I first started out with the idea of a new museum.
Currently there is a six part series called Gathering airing on TV which I have yet to delve into. So yes, there is certainly a revival of interest happening!
Simon: I think the key challenge is to celebrate shared heritage without idealising or excluding. Instead of framing folk culture as a “pure” expression of a single national spirit, emphasise its hybridity, how folklore has evolved through contact, trade, migration, and adaptation. Folk traditions are rarely static or isolated; they’re living, breathing, and shaped by many voices. We tried to show this with our last exhibition, Making Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain. We aimed to celebrate how traditions connect local communities, shared labor, storytelling, or resistance, rather than how they symbolise some notion of a unified national past, which has never existed. Why not use folk heritage as a bridge, a way to find common ground across difference, rather than a wall that defines who “belongs.” ? This way it can be a form of shared memory rather than a tool of division.
Mike: There seems to be a surge in morris sides and local customs coming back. I wonder if there are any traditions you think are really at risk, or, more optimistically, ones that have found new life?
Simon: I was reading that for the first time since the war, there are now more all female morris sides than all male. A 50/50 balance seems like a good thing. I can never understand this knee-jerk reaction to folk traditions 'dying out'. If they do it’s because they are no longer relevant to the community who upheld them. Seasonal customs thrive when they still mean something to the people involved in them.
New customs have seen a huge increase. Hastings Jack-in-the-Green was reestablished in 1983 by a group of enthusiasts and is now massively popular, along with several other reestablished seasonal customs. Keeping a dying event going which no longer has meaning is simply flogging a dead horse. Let it go until something new has a reason for existing, otherwise these things become trapped in aspic lacking their vitality.
Mike: Communities and culture are under so much pressure. Is there anything that makes you feel hopeful about the future of folk in Britain?
Simon: Despite the many pressures facing communities, public spaces, and cultural heritage today, I think there is much to feel hopeful about when it comes to the future of folk culture in Britain. Far from fading into nostalgia, folk traditions are being renewed and reimagined in ways that speak powerfully to modern life.
Across the country, I’ve seen a quiet revival of local customs, from village wassails and maypole dances to small folk festivals and storytelling circles. These aren’t simply acts of preservation, but of active participation. People are coming together to celebrate local identity and belonging, often in new and interesting ways. This grassroots energy shows that folk culture remains a vital form of community expression.
Younger generations are also breathing new life into folk music, crafts, and storytelling. Many artists are blending traditional forms with contemporary sounds and ideas, proving that folk can be both rooted and experimental. There are many new folk festivals such as The Magpies Festival in Yorkshire, the Manchester Folk Festival, the Our Folktastic Isle project on the Isle of Wight, the Black Shuck Festival in Bungay, the various Green Man festivals… the list goes on and on.
Digital platforms have also opened new possibilities. Where once folk knowledge was passed on only face to face, today it can be shared widely, songs archived online, (The EFDSS Full English project has brought together 12 major manuscript collections to create the most comprehensive free searchable digital archive of English folk music), crafts demonstrated in videos, dialects recorded and celebrated. The internet, often blamed for cultural homogenisation, has unexpectedly become a new kind of village green.
Perhaps most encouraging is the growing inclusivity within British folk culture. There is a recognition that tradition has always been shaped by movement and exchange. Artists and communities from diverse backgrounds are contributing their own stories and rhythms, enriching what “folk” means in a multicultural society.
In a time of uncertainty and division, folk culture offers something deeply grounding. It reminds us of our connection to place, to each other, and to the cycles of of the year. Its endurance lies not in preservation alone, but in adaptability and participation. For that reason, there is every reason to feel hopeful: as long as people continue to gather, sing, make, and tell stories together, Britain’s folk culture will continue to thrive.
Simon Costin is an artist, set designer and curator. He is the founder of the Museum of British Folklore and Director of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall.
After studying under Derek Jarman at Wimbledon College of Art, he became known for his imaginative, often otherworldly set designs for Alexander McQueen, Tim Walker, and Hermès, alongside his long-standing interest in Britain’s seasonal customs and vernacular traditions.