A Shared Violin for the Folk Community: New Film Celebrates Music, Landscape, and the Making of a Travelling Instrument

Premiere at Portland Works, Sheffield, 17 May, 19:30pm

A new short film, Folk Who Roam, directed by award-winning filmmaker Emma Crome, explores ongoing land access campaigns and the relationship between folk music, instrument making, and England’s rural landscape.

The project follows the making of this special violin, whose carved decorations are inspired by nature and based on an illustration provided by Nick Hayes (author of the bestseller Book of Trespass). It is then passed into the hands of its first player, Rosie Butler-Hall. Moving between the workshop and the Peak District, the film reflects on how traditional music is formed by craft and environment.

The violin featured in the film will now become a shared instrument, available for musicians to borrow and take out into the landscapes that inspire their own playing.

Over time, different musicians will carry the instrument into new places, sessions, and performances, building a growing story around the fiddle and the music played on it.

In England only 8% of the land is open for us to roam. Most woods, rivers and wild places are locked away, the legacy of centuries of exclusion. The Folk Who Roam fiddle is a musical voice calling for responsible access. Where it plays, we are allowed to be. The instrument promotes a future where the land is more equally shared.

The project has also been documented through photography by award-winning ethnographic photographer Cat Vinton, whose work focuses on craft, culture, and working communities. Vinton’s photographs capture both the making of the violin and the first ‘outing’ of the instrument in the Peak District with Rosie Butler-Hall.

The film will premiere on 17 May at Portland Works in Sheffield, a historic building with a long tradition of independent manufacturing and craft. The event will include a screening of the film followed by live music from the folk group Sāwol, and a short discussion with the filmmaker and contributors.

Folk Who Roam is produced in partnership with Blundstone UK.

Event details

Premiere screening: 17 May
Location: Portland Works, Sheffield
Live music and discussion to follow the film