NEFS Winter Residential 2025
Fri 5th – Sun 7th December 2025
Shepherds Dene, Northumberland
with Stewart Hardy and Grace Smith.

We are delighted to be holding another Winter Residential Weekend at the lovely Shepherds Dene Retreat Centre on 5th – 7th December 2025. We are planning a relaxed social weekend, with lots of fiddle playing, including our regular Saturday Workshop day with Stewart Hardy and Grace Smith. Stewart and Grace will also be with us all weekend, joining in with the sessions, providing inspirational tips and demonstrations, and teaching extra workshops on the Sunday morning.

See the NEFS Winter Residential Weekend 2025 page for details
Bookings now open!

NEFS Winter Residential 2024
Fri 29th Nov – Sun 1st Dec 2024

These just keep getting better and better! What a fabulous weekend we all had. A huge thank you to all the participants for being such a positive and generous group. We were knocked out by how you looked after each other and us! The sessions were so much fun and your company was a joy! Ali and Stewart would like to say a special thank you to our colleagues, Grace Smith and Kevin Lees, whose artistry and professionalism were of the highest order and whose contribution to the weekend quite surpassed our unreasonably high expectations!

NEFS Winter Residential 2024
Fri 29th Nov – Sun 1st Dec 2024

We are delighted to be holding another NEFS Winter Residential weekend at Shepherds Dene. Join us for workshops on fiddle technique, learn new tunes, and join in with sessions with a warm and welcoming community of adult fiddle players. All catering is provided and you can select the package that contains the events you wish to attend, residential or non-residential, daytime or evening.

Stewart Hardy, Grace Smith and Kevin Lees will be our wonderful tutors for the weekend, and they will be available to chat and answer questions, as well as sharing their inspiring tunes and insights into fiddle playing.

For more information and details of the various packages available, please see the NEFS Winter Residential 2024 page.

NEFS Summer Workshop Weekend 2024

Wow! What a weekend! Huge thanks to everyone who was able to join us and be part of our NEFS Summer Workshop Weekend 2024. It was lovely to see so many come together with such a positive attitude and eagerness to learn, and it was wonderful to hear all our fiddles ringing out together.

Thank you for the support – it really couldn’t happen without you! We are so privileged to have such excellent tutors, Stewart Hardy and Grace Smith. They worked extremely hard beforehand on all the preparation, and delivered on the day with outstanding skill and good humour. Thank you, both, so very much! We also want to thank our friends in Woolsington Strings for coming along on Saturday evening and sharing such lovely tune arrangements with everyone.

Huge thanks to Grace Smith and Kevin Lees!

What a great start to 2024! There was lots of fabulous input from Grace on our Wednesday evening calls, as well as at our Saturday workshop day, and a delightful video tutorial from Kevin Lees (plus a lovely surprise visit to our final Zoom call of the block!)

Bookings for 2024 Block 2 are now open, and you can expect more high quality teaching from Stewart and Grace as they share the teaching on a Wednesday evening. This block we will also have a Video Tutorial from Grace as well as one from Stewart. Bookings are now open through the Shop. Saturday workshop places are limited, so don’t miss out!

It’s all change at the North East Fiddle School. As 2023 comes to an end we say farewell to our colleague Melissa Whitehead, for whom the time has come to move on. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Melissa for all her hard work and brilliant teaching over the last five years. She says that she will miss all of the wonderful students a great deal, and we wish her all the very best for the future.

We still have exciting plans for 2024, so do check back for details of what is to come. We will be continuing with Wednesday evenings on Zoom, Video Tutorials and a Saturday workshop in-person each block. Details and booking information will be available on the Classes page.

Friday 8th Sept, 7.00 – 8.30 pm

Informal play-along session on Zoom with Stewart. Lots of fab tunes just for fun, with some extra harmonies thrown in! The notation is provided, with lots of tunes from the North East Fiddle School Live Tunes selection. Quite a few of these are also used for the Friday evening Online Sessions in Harmony, and harmonies from those will be provided.

There is no charge – donations will be accepted for the Stewart Hardy Music Bursary Fund, which contributes small amounts to individuals to help them afford our courses and workshops.

Details of the tune list can be sent by Ali on request. You don’t have to be attending NEFS, online workshops or JSArts courses to come along and you don’t have to make a donation – it’s open to everyone, so please tell any musician friends you think might be interested.

Zoom Details
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81265808817?pwd=d00rc3dEdHVxenlJN2FudTlPbE1GUT09
Meeting ID: 812 6580 8817
Passcode: nefs2023se

Hope you can join us!

NEFS Summer Workshop Weekend
Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th July
We are delighted to announce that Grace Smith will be teaching alongside Stewart for this brand new venture – a weekend of in-person fiddle tuition.

The Saturday workshop will be similar to our usual format of tune workshops and a session, together with some extra focus on troublesome techniques that our members have identified as particularly worthy of attention.

We have exciting plans for the Sunday when, in addition to learning some cracking tunes, participants will be presented with opportunities to develop their musical imaginations and explore aspects of ensemble playing with harmonies, chords and arrangement techniques. We will, of course have a final session to round off the weekend and very much hope you can join us!

Plus the wonderful Frank McLaughlin will be coming down from Edinburgh with his guitar to join Stewart for an informal concert & session on the Saturday evening – all welcome and donations are encouraged.

Book your place via the shop. Choose the product that includes all of the events that you wish to attend. Prices include a discount for booking multiple events.

Book now in the Shop

What was Melissa up to in this Technical Nugget from Block 1? Join us for more awesome tips to improve your fiddle playing!

We are delighted to be forging ahead into 2023 with another block of Online Zoom calls and Video Tutorials, with a Saturday in-person workshop too. The Zoom calls begin on Wednesday 1st March, and the Saturday Workshop will be at Wylam Methodist Church on 18th March.

Check out the Classes page for more details and you can book your place in the Shop now! We hope you can join us, either on Zoom, face to face, or both! Each option can be booked separately, but there is a discount if you sign-up to both.