Folklore Matters

Now that our first ever series of Folklore Matters is out there, hosts and researchers, Diane Rodgers and Sophie Parkes-Nield, give a quick overview of their favourite moments.

Professor Helen Wheatley is a legendary television scholar who has published seminal books, such as Gothic Television, the award-winning Spectacular Television: Exploring Televisual Pleasure, and more recently Television/Death, a study of death, bereavement and dying on television. In this episode of Folklore Matters - the final episode of series one - Helen joins Diane Rodgers in the studio to talk about folk horror (especially when it wasn't really known as folk horror), gothic television, and why television makers in the late twentieth century scared children.

Folklore is massive on social media, and around May Day and Halloween, you may have seen films and photographs of people dancing on their own or in small groups to celebrate seasonal change. If so, it may have been at the instigation of artist and activist, Lucy Wright, our guest in this latest episode of Folklore Matters. Lucy is a prolific polymath: academic, musician, artist, and writer. In this episode, she discusses who gets to participate in folklore, and how and why creation matters.

This special episode of Folklore Matters is a recording of a live event at Off The Shelf 2025, at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield. Part of the National Folklore Survey for England team, Professor Owen Davies and Dr Ceri Houlbrook published a groundbreaking book in 2025, entitled Folklore: a journey through the past and present. This episode presents Owen and Ceri live in conversation with David Clarke, speaking about their book, the decision to write it and their introduction to folklore, but also their involvement in the Survey project. As some of the audience questions couldn't be heard very well in the recording, Diane Rodgers interprets so Owen and Ceri's answers can be contextualised.

Contemporary discussions of folklore soon arrive at cult film The Wicker Man. In this episode of Folklore Matters, David, Sophie and Diane meet Dominic Hardy, son of Robin Hardy, director of The Wicker Man, to learn about the film's lasting cultural legacy, but also the film's impact on Dominic's family. Dominic, with his brother, Justin, produced a film and recently published a book, both entitled Children of The Wicker Man, that interrogates their experiences.

It's time to catch up with another Sheffield Hallam colleague, this time photographer, folklore researcher and lecturer, Andrew Robinson.Andrew’s fascinated by the visual representation of custom and tradition in England, along with the folklore, myth and legend associated with photographs and photographers. He's recently been working with David on the Calvine UFO - more in this episode - and has been documenting calendar customs in England since the 1990s.

Richard Bradley is a librarian at Sheffield Hallam University, where Folklore Matters hosts, David Clarke, Sophie Parkes-Nield, and Diane Rodgers, are based. But in the world of folklore, Richard is known as 'Weird Derbyshire' and has been researching, attending and documenting the folklore and customs of Derbyshire for the past decade. He's published four local history books including 'Secret Chesterfield' and 'The A - Z of Curious Derbyshire', and writes a monthly feature on the folklore of Derbyshire for Derbyshire Life magazine since 2020. It's about time we sat down with Richard to learn more about his work, his interests, and how he discovered Weird Derbyshire.

The profile of folklore in England has never seemed bigger. In Folklore Matters, folklore researchers, David Clarke, Sophie Parkes-Nield, and Diane Rodgers, want to find out more about people’s interests in the folklore of the country, how they’re working with it, collecting or documenting it.This introductory episode sets out what listeners can expect from Folklore Matters, and a little more about the National Folklore Survey for England project on which David, Sophie and Diane are working.