Lauren is currently doing her PhD in classics at the University of Nottingham. After discovering folk at her 2nd year as an undergrad in Cambridge, she’s now regularly dancing Playford and loves contra even though it took her about 6 months to learn how to swing. Lauren has attended a total of 7 IVFDFs and is our only Nottingham-born committee member. At IVFDF 2019, several committee members were involved in taking Lauren on a scenic tour through Edinburgh which ended with her engagement to our secretary Josh.
Josh Catlin
Josh from Nottingham studied electrical engineering and dances contra, Playford and English ceilidh on a regular basis. After our chairperson Lauren “happened” in December 2016, she introduced him to dancing which started his whirlwind adventure in the folk world. He began calling after six months, started playing the fiddle six months after that and played for dancing for the first time another year later. Josh has made the leap from dancing at his first IVFDF in 2017 to calling in 2018 to now running the festival. Thankfully, he enjoys organizing and helping out wherever he can.
Julia Weber
Julia from Germany is currently still working on her PhD in pharmacy. She discovered Scottish country dancing during her undergrad and picked up Highland, Step and ceilidh dancing during her master’s in Edinburgh. Nowadays she mostly dances Playford in a historical dancing group in Leipzig. The Gryffindor-Hobbit-Jedi has never watched a single episode of Game of Thrones, writes novels in her free time and has attended 5 IVFDFs.
Ivy Oldroyd
Ivy from Huddersfield is a maths student at Durham. She enjoys contra, ceilidh, Cotswold and (just to show she doesn’t have a thing for the letter C...) rapper dancing. She has a spider plant named Sarah, rewards herself with shiny stickers during revision times and owns a necklace with charms she made to represent every IVFDF she’s been to! Ivy has attended 4 IVFDFs, which incidentally coincides with the number 4 being her favourite as the Latin numerals IV sound like her name.
Mirta Balazic Geric
Mirta, who finally ended our treasurer-search, is originally from Slovenia and studies physiotherapy at Glasgow Caledonian University. She regularly dances Balfolk, Highland and Balkan dances and assumes she discovered folk dancing when she was a 6 week old baby as her parents took her along to a Balkan dance class they were teaching. Mirta is mortified by spiders and other creepy-crawlies but is nonetheless spending the summer in Australia.
Bethany Keightley
Beth from Nottingham studied 3D Art and Design. She started dancing folk at the age of six but only rediscovered her love for it in 2017 when she joined NFDG where she regularly dances Playford. She also occasionally sings and performs at a folk music group. She describes herself as a Hufflepuff, painter, bookworm, ukulele playing Jane Austen addict who loves to dance! IVFDF 2020 is only going to be her second IVFDF and we are chuffed that Beth is doing the design and artwork for us!
Laurence Pritchard
Laurence studied physics at Cambridge. He lived in Hertfordshire and Leicestershire as a child: he dances Playford and the occasional ceilidh. The former steel drum band president discovered folk dancing when Lauren took him to Loughborough Folk Dance Club and has attended every IVFDF since 2016.
Sally Vernon
Sally studied maths at Cambridge and has lost count of how many IVFDFs she’s been to since 2004. Her main club is the Round, which is mostly a Playford club, but she also loves contra, scottish, ceilidh, and just trying lots of different things. She got hooked on folk dancing after a friend took her along to a ceilidh when she was at uni. When she’s not dancing, she can often be found up and down hills or running a long way very slowly.
