As a boatbuilder, folk musician and maker of traditional Norfolk dulcimers and Celtic harps, local culture has always been very important to me – a part of my identity. There is a danger that local traditions can make us insular and cut us off from other people, but they can also give us close, unexpected links with very different distant cultures, like a kind of hidden underground railway, with stations all over the world. The dulcimer in particular, which is local to East Anglia, where it has been used for centuries, is a very international instrument and the aim of my Fellowship was to use my skills as a dulcimer maker to allow me to make friends and work with people with whom I might have no other connection or shared language and who might even, for one reason or another, have once been seen as potential enemies.

I spent three months in Hungary, Iran and China, working with cimbalom maker Nagy Akos in Budapest, with santur maker Darius Salari in Tehran, and spending time with yang qin makers in instrument factories in Beijing and Shanghai. It was by far a better success than I could have hoped for and was a life-changing experience – and I still hope one day to share my experiences in a book.