FolkActive have suspended all our regular groups for the time being.

This will affect FolkActive Dances, Moving in the Moment, Southampton Folk Orchestra, FolkActive Youth Ensemble and Portsmouth Youth Folk Ensemble.

Stay safe and keep dancing, making music and being active!

At FolkActive we’re passionate about sharing active, skilful and joyful engagement in the folk arts with everyone.

We’re a social enterprise based in southern Hampshire. We use traditional music, songs and dances as fabulously flexible tools for achieving our aims of:

• improving health and wellbeing,
• bringing communities together, and
• educating young and old, to connect and engage with their folk heritage in lively and relevant ways.

Wellbeing

Dance is a proven and powerful way to improve wellbeing. Mix physical exercise, live folk music and friendly people together and you have the perfect recipe for having fun while making new friends and learning new moves! We adapt for the less mobile...

Community

Making and responding to music with others is a great way of connecting and building community. We are involved with informal social music and dance sessions as well as running more structured groups such as the Southampton Folk Orchestra, aiming to play...

Education

Schools ask for a fascinating range of workshops based on the folk traditions of where we live, including broom dancing, maypole, morris and country dancing. We always use live music adding depth to the experience and we encourage creativity – we love t...