Following our recent Get People Dancing initiative, we are pleased to encourage all our members to join the new nationwide Let’s Dance campaign spearheaded by Angela Rippon, CBE. Following her success on Strictly and reaping the benefits of regular dance, Angela is on a mission to get more people dancing on Sunday 2 March 2025! We would be pleased to highlight all the traditional dance activities across Scotland. Just drop us a line at [email protected] with all the details of your event on the day. Use the toolkit packed with tips, including how to raise awareness, reach out or risk assess your event.

LET’S DANCE TOOLKIT

Proud to announce that our Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland Convenor Wendy Timmons and Curator Iliyana Nedkova were crowned by the experts of the List Magazine – Scotland’s favourite cultural magazine – amongst the best in Scottish arts and culture for 2024. We were humbled to see our innovative Pomegranates festival of world trad dance included on the #ListHot100 and recognised as one of the 100 most influential events of the year. To celebrate this prestigious recognition we threw a festive Ceilidh Plus event dancing to live music from Scotland, Greece and Italy together with dance callers Marina Sharp, Vassia Bouchagiar-Walker + Monica de Ioannis and Inesa Vėlavičiūtė of the Italian Folk Connections.

CEILIDH PLUS VLOG

Every spring since 2022 Pomegranates becomes a platform for our diverse members to teach, learn and perform and thus sow the seeds and sequins of world trad dance across the country. The festival provides a wider public showcase for the range of our artists’ residencies and dance theatre productions. In 2024 the festival season started early, with our five world trad dance sessions for beginners at Edinburgh’s Stockbridge Library and continued with another 20 events, including dance exhibitions and tours, shows and workshops, residencies and family events – all free and Pay What You Can. Find out more and save the dates 25-30 April 2025 for the fourth edition of Pomegranates!

POMEGRANATES

Did you know that the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland was established in 2014? In autumn 2024 we marked our 10th anniversary with Ten out of Ten – a series of events with traditional dance roots across Edinburgh celebrating the diversity and breadth of traditional dance activities by our 200+ members. Some of our Ten out of Ten highlights? They included a Scottish Stepdance Workshop; a Ceilidh Plus night packed with Ceilidh dances and tunes from Scotland, China and the USA, as well as a dance through the Scottish Enlightenment. We finished with another Ceilidh Plus event featuring Ceilidh dances and tunes from Scotland, Italy and Greece.

TEN OUT OF TEN

You missed the third annual ReFashion Edinburgh – the sustainable slow fashion event curated by our Pomegranates 2024 festival fashion designer-in-residence Alison Harm. Join us in saying thank you to Alison Harm and all who made ReFashion Edinburgh 2024 such a runaway success and trusted us, the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland as this year’s chosen charity. We couldn’t be more grateful for this generous and glamorous birthday gift marking our 10th anniversary. Thank you, ReFashion Edinburgh! This donation will enable us to continue embedding diversity and sustainability in traditional dance across Scotland.

REFASHION