Rummaging through an old Round minute book I see that on April 15th 1951 we "had received a letter asking if the Round would be willing to make Cambridge the centre of a Universities' Folk Dancing Festival in 1952. The Round had not received notice of this year's festival, organised at Leeds by the Leeds Univerrsity Scottish Society and Hull University Folk Dancing Society, presumeably because the University had forwarded nothing. Information trickling through various channels suggested that there had been little more that a series of 10 minute displays by teams from many places. It was agreed that the Round was not interested in such large meetings, but would welcome small groups that danced Playford."
In October 1952 it "was decided to send a team to the 'Universities Folk Dance Festival' were it to be held in London." (since it ended up in Sheffield this fell through)
In November 1953 we get the first use of the term Inter-Varsity Festival when it was decided that Edinburgh on 13th Feb was impracticable; in October 1954 it was agreed to write to the IVFDF organisers to tell them why we hadn't joined in, and to ask to have the festival more in the south, if possible.
In January 1955 it was decided that the Chairman should attend Birmingham (Feb 12th) as an observer and that the Round would pay for 6/- tickets for up to 4 members (we actually paid 18/- i.e. 3 tickets). At a meeting on April 25 1955 we had a "report on Birmingham where Marion commented favourably on the surroundings, dancing, organisation and floor, and though regretting the excess of Scottish dancing in the evening she felt that people should be encouraged to go next year. Lawerence had attended a meeting about the organisation. He felt that the Round should be willing to be associated with the Festival despite the difficculties of keeping nights, and getting a team in the vacation.
In January 18th 1956 it was noted that we were out of touch with the Inter-Universities FD Festival, and it was thought desirable that this be rectified.
However it seems it was not rectified and IVFDF seems to have dropped off the Round's radar.
These days we are very active in IVFDF and held it in Cambridge in 1997, 2001, 2006 and 2017: see the Round at IVFDF and the main IVFDF web page.
Page maintained by Hugh Stewart