CAST your mind back, musically, to 1983. Among the bands at Number 1 were The Police, David Bowie, Duran Duran, Culture Club and Spandau Ballet. No hint there that this could be a great year to set up a folk organisation.

But on the edge of Dartmoor, two people with their hearts firmly in the folk movement were doing just that.

Paul Wilson and Marilyn Tucker were determined to bring folk music and all of the local history and heritage that comes with it to a much wider audience, and so Wren Music was born – slap bang in the middle of the New Romantic era.

A lot has changed in the last 30 years, especially when it comes to folk music. Paul and Marilyn are the first to admit that folk had an image problem when they launched Wren Music. But the popularity of the likes of Seth Lakeman and Mumford and Sons is proof that all this has changed.

'Folk music is much sexier now than it was then,' said Marilyn. 'In those days it was about old men with beards and tankards in pubs, and there isn't anything wrong with old men with beards and tankards – we love them! But folk was a very insular thing. People regarded it as old-fashioned and something for the aficionados.

'But I thought "this music is just too important to stay within the folk scene – it needs to be out there in the community, where it had come from in the first place". And it all started from that thought, really.'

Paul and Marilyn recall being 'knee-deep in envelopes' as they worked on building a profile and securing funding. Helped by an initial grant from the Arts Council, they set about their goal of getting as many communities as possible involved in music.

'The vision was quite clear,' said Paul. 'We wanted to set up something that made space for people to expand and make their own music. And we always said that we wanted people to be able to make their own fun. To help achieve this we relaxed our definition of folk music – "if you can hum it, we'll work with it".'

Thirty years on and Wren Music, based in Okehampton, has spread its wings. With the help of a small team of talented singers and musicians, they now work with communities in Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset as well as in its traditional heartland, Devon. They even work on projects in Newfoundland, where it is said that 60% of residents can trace their ancestral roots to South West England.

Thousands of people have learned how to sing, play an instrument or write a song with the help of Wren Music.

Wren has five folk choirs — North Devon, East Devon, West Devon, Torbay and Exeter — and three folk orchestras in the county as well as the Mandolin Orchestra of Devon. The team also works with youth groups, schools and vulnerable young people. The choirs are proving especially popular, helped by the recent success of Gareth Malone's community choir projects, including The Military Wives.

'We work with over 30,000 people a year on a participant session basis,' said Paul. 'I've played the fiddle and accordion at a mums' and toddlers' group where the youngest was probably only a couple of weeks old and I've worked with a 102-year-old lady from Paignton whose story was that she had seen the king and his young bride when they visited Torquay!

'When we started, there was a folk movement and a community arts movement — and they are two sides of the same coin – but they didn't really talk to each other, which I found amazing. The folk scene existed as one thing and the poets and screen printers were in another world entirely. We built the bridge really, and connected things together.'

The biggest single project undertaken by Wren was a mammoth task: tracing and digitising the songs which had been collected and written down by the Rev Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924). When they began the hunt, they had no idea there were almost 1,000 songs. The squire and parson from Lewtrenchard wrote books and hymns – including Onward Christian Soldiers – and he also spent several years travelling around Devon and Cornwall, collecting traditional folk songs.

Some of the songs have been brought to a 21st century audience by Devon folk singer Jim Causley, one of the young musicians whose folk career began with Wren: 'I was at Exeter College at the time and I'd been in a number of choirs but I wasn't really happy with them. Then a lad in my village, Whimple, told me about a Wren choir in Exeter. I joined and that was a big part in my getting into the folk business.

'And it introduced me to this amazing collection of songs which Sabine Baring-Gould had collected. I do a lot of those songs — they are a big part of my repertoire. The songs tell the story of places and people in a way that history books can't.' The songs are celebrated at Wren's annual Baring-Gould Festival which is held in Okehampton each October.

To mark the 30th anniversary, the eight singing and music leaders on Wren staff are teaming up as a band and going on a national tour, starting with a premiere at Exeter Northcott Theatre in June. It's a special concert entitled When The Moon Is Full and is inspired by Baring-Gould's famous work, The Book of Were-Wolves.

'We're looking at the folklore which may have informed things like Harry Potter – there are little references in there,' said Marilyn.

The local heritage element of Wren's work is hugely important for Paul. So can he spot a Devonshire folk song when he hears it? 'I think there are songs that are completely Devon which you don't find in many other places. Widecombe Fair is the most obvious one, although there are versions of Widecombe Fair in other parts of the country.'

Wren became a registered charity in 1987 but with cuts in arts funding, the team is now busier than ever, working on projects across the South West, making every corner of their resources work hard. They are keen to hear from anyone who wants help with a project: 'What we do very much depends on what communities want,' said Marilyn.

'Northlew had their village pump rebuilt and they wanted to re-dedicate it. So we worked with the school to write some songs and decorated the village square and it was a lovely celebration.'

Everything seems to have come full circle. For the past three decades a key task for Wren has been to hunt down old songs and stories and archive them so they can be made freely available and, crucially, preserved for the future. Now, it is having to do exactly the same thing with its own, ever-increasing tome of work: 'The feeling I have is that we've got to write down and document as much of what we've done as we can so that others can get on with it,' said Paul.

'And I think they are. There is huge enthusiasm. Jim Causley has taken on a lot of the songs we've provided, which is great. We've got six younger staff around us and an 18-year-old woman who is working with us too. It's all cyclical.'

Marilyn is clear about the role Wren has played in the revival of English folk music: 'More people are now aware that we have this tradition of English folk music — 30 years ago people just thought of folk music as being Irish or Scottish. We are pushing at an open door now and it's much more a part of mainstream culture to have folk music.

'The Wren legacy can be seen in the choirs and the orchestras, which are organising their own events nearly every week.

'Looking ahead, we've got to overcome the changes in funding. Whether we succeed in overcoming it is in the balance. It's going to be hard work. But if we want disadvantaged young people to get involved in things, someone's got to pay. Some things need funding.'

As for the name Wren, well there's a story behind that, too: 'We wanted something that said "we are English and we make a lot of noise".'

Here's to another 30 years of noise!