photography GEORGE HUTTON
A howling parade which gathers pace through a winter-stricken orchard, blessing the trees and willing them to fruit. A pilgrimage to the Avebury stones welcomes the equinox with a ceremonial bonfire. A troupe of dancing young women—beribboned and garlanded—twirling in sinuous formations like so many Faerie Queens. These scenes sound like vignettes from a Thomas Hardy novel, but thanks to a surge of clubs, societies and gatherings reacquainting new generations with antiquated British customs, folklore and rituals, such sights are more 2025 than you might think.
Across the U.K., young people are finding joy in the revival of traditional cultural practices like ceilidh, Morris and barn dancing, and taking an increasing interest in Pagan customs—from celebrating the solstice to wassailing. In London, Cecil Sharp House, home of the English Folk Dance & Song Society, reports that, across their full programme of events, an average of 22% of audiences are under 30 (rising to 44% for ceilidhs, a traditional Scottish or Irish group dance). Meanwhile, digital communities are sprouting like wildflowers to bring these bucolic pastimes to the masses. Is this just about “touching grass,” or something deeper?
Boss Morris is one of a wave of troupes—or “sides,” as they’re called—transforming a tradition that’s existed in England since at least the fifteenth century. It is historically performed mainly by men, wearing bells and waving sticks and handkerchiefs. There are only four sides in the country which claim a continuous lineage since their formation in the late Medieval period, but Boss Morris, and peers such as Molly No-Mates, The Wyrd Sisters and Beltane Morris, are leading a distinctly female renaissance. With colorful costumes featuring Day-Glo accents, broderie anglais, and crochet, Boss Morris is as likely to perform at Glastonbury or the Brit Awards as at an agricultural fair.
Jussara Nazaré, 27, the troupe’s newest and youngest member, joined after moving to the U.K. from Portugal, where she was raised in a São Toméan family. “Moving here, and it being closely followed by Brexit, was a dark time in a way,” Jussara says. “But it got me more interested in researching British culture, to find out about things like the solstices, apple-picking day, the equinox, the stone circles… I became fascinated by the magic that makes up this island.”
The restrictions to movement and tightening of borders brought on by Brexit were later compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic. In just five years, the world that should have just been opening up for young people instead shrank to the digi-sphere and whatever was close to home. Stone Club—a community founded by Matthew Shaw and Lally MacBeth for prehistory enthusiasts—hosts walks, talks, and regular nights at The Social in Central London. It was born out of lockdown to facilitate the growing curiosity about Britain and its history, when foreign travel was still but a dream. “Lockdown made us so hyper-local,” Matthew explains. “Everything already on our doorstep became much more interesting.”
Since then, they’ve observed an increase in young people attending events and engaging with folk culture more broadly. “This generation suffers/struggles with really high anxiety,” Matthew says. “There are more neurodivergent diagnoses, a huge boom in wellness culture, a lust for digital detoxing, and an ongoing desire to be part of nature rather than apart from nature. It’s a perfect storm.”
Scroll for a while, and you’ll notice new folk communities aimed at Gen Z are everywhere: Folk of the Round Table (a music night at Set Social in Peckham), Folk Club (workshops and events, also in Peckham), Queer Ceilidh (an LGBTQIA+ folk dance and drag night), Roam Roam Roam (a collaborative folk anthology), Goblin Band (musical quartet), Grimoire Silvanus (a zine for hedge witches and landscape punks).
If this all paints the picture of the U.K. as a quaint, cheerful nation of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed adolescents welcoming everyone to sup cider and weave wheat in perfect harmony—alas, it’s not so. Beneath the surface, xenophobia and racism simmer, especially in England. Riots and arson attempts have targeted “asylum hotels,” zebra crossings and roundabouts are being spray-painted with St. George’s Crosses, and in September, the country saw its largest far-right rally in recent memory, drawing some 110,000 participants under a banner of anti-immigration conspiracy theories.
It’s impossible to engage in folk culture in Britain today without acknowledging how vulnerable it is to co-optation by bad actors. If the St. George’s flag—outside of a sports context—has become the ultimate symbol of national identity, devoid of real connection to land, season, or tradition, the same cannot be said of the rich imagery of these historic customs.
The folk revival plays in the same sandbox of nostalgia where would-be fascists build their castles; fragile, foundationless fantasies of an idyllic past straight out of a Constable painting. Whether cherry-picked or invented, such myths reject inconvenient truths in favor of a palatable lie: That Britain used to be something different—nay, better—than it is now.
It’s text book stuff. In How Fascism Works, philosopher Jason Stanley describes these myths as “fantasies of a non-existent past uniformity, which survives in the traditions of the small towns and countrysides that remain relatively unpolluted by the liberal decadence of the cities.” So how can a revival rooted in rural traditions distance itself from those who would weaponize it to promote “British values” or “take our country back”?
It starts with rejecting the myth entirely. “When people talk about true English identity as being Celtic or Anglo-Saxon, I just think: What are you talking about?” says Muco, 23, a musician who’s gained over 60,000 TikTok followers for his interpretations of English medieval music, accompanied by instruments like the Inanga, inspired by his Burundian heritage. “This country was serially conquered by new people, and it’s been a mix of ethnic identities from the moment people first settled here. It’s insane to pick one tribe out of that and suggest they’re the ‘real’ English.”
Matthew from Stone Club adds, “These sites were really clearly built by all kinds of people throughout the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages. They predate any national identity we’d recognize today. We were still physically connected to Europe by Doggerland then. Even after we were cut off, we were still being influenced by all those other cultures. You can’t study British archeological sites for long without seeing traces of global trade.” Far from an isolated ancestral land, these sites reveal a history of exchange, open borders, and cooperation. Where nationalists imagine purity, folk practitioners celebrate porosity.
For Muco, the key is not cosplay or perfect reconstruction, but dialogue between past and present. “It’s much more effective to engage with history by exploring how people feel today,” he says. “It’s about an authentic emotional connection, not an authentic re-creation.”
Boss Morris agrees that subversion at every point of performance is key to inclusivity. “When I tell people that we dance to UK Garage, their ears perk up,” says Jussara. “It’s been fascinating to see the positive reactions from people who would normally associate Morris dancing with their grandparents’ generation.”
As with earlier folk revivals, this one seems poised to enter the mainstream. Heritage brands like Burberry, Barbour, and Hunter have long drawn from a vintage British aesthetic—often rooted in twentieth-century culture, from Brideshead Revisited to Cool Britannia. But a new generation of designers, such as Lili Curia with her Dickensian lace-up boots, is looking further back. The Barbican’s new Dirty Looks exhibition showcases how U.K.-based designers like Dilara Fındıkoğlu, Yodea-Marquel Williams, and Piero D’Angelo are engaging in what it calls “a nostalgia of mud”—an embrace of natural landscapes and folkloric motifs as rebellion.
Fragrance brand Ffern, whose four annual releases are crafted in tune with Britain’s natural landscape and shifting seasons, has even launched a foundation to support folk arts with an annual grant of £50,000. And Florence + The Machine’s forthcoming album promises “mysticism, witchcraft, and folk horror.”
Elizabeth Bailey, 31, co-founder of Folk Club in South London, hopes to see the movement’s spirit of inclusivity continue—and its political roots resurface. “As folk gets more popular, I’d love to see even more politics and protest in the scene,” she says. “It’d be sick if we could revive that and really embed it in the comeback, because they’re so connected. The power of a movement, not just customs.’
If folk culture is the history of the people, its future belongs to those reshaping it now: Queer dancers, musicians weaving global traditions into English ballads, friends heading from Stone Henge straight to the club. In their hands, the revival isn’t a retreat into fantasy but a way of grounding modern life in ritual, connection, and nature. Rather than looking backward to a fake past, it’s about carrying these customs forward—rejecting individualism in favor of community, and finding something truly worth being proud of.