Sam Lee / The Nest Collective

The Nest Collective, BBC Folk Club of 2010, is an acoustic folk club pushing the musical boundaries within the promotion of folk, world and traditional music. Formed in 2006 by Mercury nominated singer Sam Lee, it hosts a multitude of show types hosting emerging and established artists alike. Our concerts navigate our diverse listenership towards music that both pushes boundaries alongside music that has resisted change staying true to an ancient way. The Nest prides itself on bringing together these ‘from the source’ inspired artists, as well as radically minded British and worldwide creatives, to meet audiences thirsting for the rare and rooted, and a music industry keen to see what’s next to come or simply ‘hasn’t disappeared’

The last 10 years have seen an incredible tidal change in appreciation of Folk Music as an art form now accepted on the cultural main stage. The Nest Collective (formally the Magpie’s Nest) from very humble beginnings has charted this resurgence in a unique way seeking the unusual, the overlooked and often the very best in New Folk, Old Folk and No Folk.

Our events fall under many spokes of the Nest Collective Umbrella hosting within many themes be they dance and ceilidh events, Shanty singing sessions, unamplified round the fire concerts or more classic under a roof type affairs. check out our ‘Regular Shows’ slider on our homepage for all the different themes.

The Nest Collective prides itself on discovering not only the latest music to emerge onto the scene but as London’s place to go for new music in unusual venues, we have pioneered the re-connection of the wider folk phenomenon with a young and old community taking our events into locations no other promoter would dare go.

The Nest Collective


The club has become a barometer of this current revival working on both a community level with regular intimate shows to programming large events in many of the major London venues including the Southbank Center, The Roundhouse, The Foundling Museum, Kings Place, Modern Art Oxford, The Royal Academy of Arts, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern & Britain, National Maritime Museum, London Museum and Cecil Sharp House. We curate annual stages at many major UK festivals including Shambala, Cambridge Folk Festival, Festival No6, Port Elliot, How The Light Gets In, The Vault Festival and Land of Kings.

We also program music industry events from showcase nights to seminars aimed at professionalising folk musicians. We host a weekly radio show, The Nest Collective Hour on London’s Resonance 104.4FM and DAB station and manage our own in house ceilidh band The Ceilidh Liberation Front who are brilliant at helping us cope with the amount of ‘stuff’ we somehow manage to get ourselves into.