Britain's Folklore Revival Is a Grassroots Resilience Play Against Atomisation

A major Sheffield Hallam survey of 2,000 people charts England's folklore boom — driven by younger generations seeking analogue connection, climate solidarity, and community infrastructure outside institutional channels.

The National Folklore Survey for England, a two-year study coordinated by the Centre for Contemporary Legend at Sheffield Hallam University, provides the most comprehensive snapshot of contemporary folk culture in England to date. Based on nearly 2,000 participants, it documents a significant generational shift: younger cohorts are twice as likely as older respondents to believe in conspiracy theories, demons, and curses, while nearly half of 16-to-24-year-olds believe Princess Diana was murdered despite not being born when she died in 1997. One-third of all respondents believe ghosts exist, and 51% perform some ritual upon seeing a magpie.

The revival is not archival nostalgia. It is a network of new community formations — folklore societies, heritage craft groups, fanzine editors, seasonal ritual participants — that function as low-cost, intergenerational social infrastructure. Folk Club, founded in south London four years ago by Ellie Dempsey and Elizabeth Bailey, is one example of dozens popping up across England. These groups create analogue meeting points in a post-pandemic landscape where entertainment is overwhelmingly screen-based and age-segregated. The climate emergency is an explicit accelerant. Elizabeth Bailey draws a direct line between ecological anxiety and folkloric participation: 'Folklore often sees a revival at points of national crisis, because it's so much about coming together and connecting with the natural world.' Right to Roam protesters summoned Old Crockern, the mythical guardian spirit of Dartmoor. Extinction Rebellion crowds banged pots and pans. These are new folklore being generated in real time, not heritage preserved under glass. The inclusivity dimension is structurally significant. Morris dancing — once exclusively male — now has as many female dancers as men, with queer and feminist troupes like Boss Morris performing at the Brit Awards and Glastonbury. Jack in the Green, the annual May Day skirmish in Hastings, has included an LGBTQI+ troupe for 30 years. Academics describe 'multifolkloric Britain,' arguing that folklore is inherently diverse because people have always arrived and departed, bringing and taking customs. The far-right co-option risk is real but overstated by sceptics. The academics interviewed — project co-lead Dr Diane A Rodgers and researcher Dr Sophie Parkes-Nield — note that most folk customs operate at hyperlocal scale, not national. Folklore is historically anti-establishment: calendar customs were suppressed by authorities who considered them riotous behaviour by the lower classes. Notting Hill Carnival is perhaps the best-known example of communities celebrating themselves outside the dominant culture. The aggressive use of the St George's flag by anti-immigrant activists represents a narrow capture attempt against a fundamentally plural tradition. Media representation has amplified the wave: folk horror films like Hereditary, Midsommar, and The Ritual; television from The League of Gentlemen to Detectorists and Small Prophets; and thriving online communities exploring urban legends, spell-making, and paganism under hashtags like WitchTok and #pagan. According to recent census data, shamanism is the fastest-growing belief system in the UK. The structural read is clear: when institutional trust erodes and digital mediation fragments communities, people build alternative connective tissue from whatever materials are locally available. Folklore — free, decentralised, place-specific, and requiring no institutional permission — is almost perfectly designed for this function. The question is whether this organic resilience-building scales or remains a scattered collection of charming local experiments.