NATIONWIDE SURVEY OF CLUBS, ASSOCIATIONS, SOCIETIES AND INFORMAL GROUPS IN BRITAIN

Mytribe is the working title of a book by Henry Hemming about British clubs, associations, societies and other informal groups: past, present and future. It will be published by John Murray in March 2011.

In order to get a better understanding of how these groups work and what their future holds Henry has launched a nationwide survey. The criteria for inclusion are simple: the group must have a name and meet face-to-face on a regular basis – the group could be a book group, amateur dramatic society, motorbike club, choir, band, sporting team, social club, appreciation society, or any other informal group run on a non-commercial basis. If you belong to such a group, please have a look at this short questionnaire. Equally if you know anyone who belongs to a group like this, please take a moment to forward the questionnaire to them.

We live in an age of statistics and yet, currently, there is no accurate data explaining the range and nature of associational activity in Britain today. With your help this can change. The aim is to get a sense of the extraordinary range of group activities and an understanding of just how much these groups mean to their members.

Each group that returns a completed questionnaire will be gratefully acknowledged in the book, while all data generated from the survey will be freely available on this site under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.

Frank Brinkley is helping Henry with this survey, so if you have any questions please email him here.