The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture by Wilson Charles Reagan Ferris William Hinson Glenn

Author:Wilson, Charles Reagan, Ferris, William, Hinson, Glenn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2009-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Public Folklife Programs

Currently there are some 50 public folklife programs scattered throughout the South. Operating on the local, state, and regional levels, these programs—staffed by dozens of professional folklorists—are engaged full time in collecting, documenting, disseminating, and celebrating the folk cultural expressions of the South. Their activities include exhibitions, festivals, publications, recordings, concerts, conferences/seminars, education programs, apprenticeships, media productions, and recognition award programs. Nearly all of these programs have come into existence since the 1970s, the result of actions by various federal agencies and of initiatives by local, state, and regional organizations.

In anticipation of the nation’s 1976 Bicentennial celebration, the American public increasingly came to perceive folklife as a tangible, living legacy of the American historical experience. The Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folklife, directed by Ralph Rinzler, had fostered increased awareness of the nation’s folk cultural expressions since 1967. In 1973 the National Endowment for the Arts (established by Congress in 1965) hired Alan Jabbour to direct its newly created Folk Arts Program, providing for the first time a grants budget dedicated specifically to funding public folklife activities. Three years later, after several years of lobbying by folklorist Archie Green, Congress created the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Also in 1976, in celebration of the Bicentennial, the Smithsonian expanded its Festival of American Folklife to a summerlong extravaganza on the National Mall.

Meanwhile, in the South, William Ferris and Judy Peiser founded the private, nonprofit, Memphis-based Center for Southern Folklore in 1972. In its early years, the center achieved regional and national recognition for its documentary films, many of which focused on the folk traditions of Mississippi. While dozens of libraries, schools, arts councils, museums, and other organizations in the South had produced a range of public folklife projects, the Center for Southern Folklore was the first organization dedicated exclusively to such activity.

In 1974, with grant support from the newly created Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission became the first state arts agency to create a public folklife program; they hired Linda White as the program’s first director. This particular initiative was short-lived, however, and the Tennessee Arts Commission would go some eight years without a program before its renewal in 1984.

In 1976 the Florida Folklife Program was established, when Al Head—director of the Stephen Foster Center, a state park operating within the office of the Florida secretary of state—hired Peggy Bulger as the director of Florida’s newly created public folklife program. Two years later, Head played much the same role in Louisiana, where he served as director of that state’s Division of Arts; there, he hired Nick Spitzer to direct Louisiana’s new folklife office.

After a successful folklorist-in-the-schools residency in 1976, Alabama created its own folklife program the following year, hiring Hank Willett as director and establishing the office within the Alabama State Council on the Arts. In North Carolina, in turn, a large and successful Bicentennial state folklife festival led to the creation of the Office of Folklife

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