Neil Pearson has been appointed as Artist Development Manager at the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). Key aspects of this new role will be to commission new projects, administer the bursary programme, and to manage the Society’s Folk Rising programme, which showcases emerging musicians.

Pearson is already the Programming Manager for EFDSS’s headquarters Cecil Sharp House in Camden and is part of the management team that organises the Shrewsbury Folk Festival. In recent years he has been Project Director for two high-profile and successful multi-artist projects: the Darwin Song Project and the Cecil Sharp Project, which saw British and North American folk musicians come together for a residential period with the aim of creating new works together. www.efdss.org