by OFN director, Emily Hartlerode
I recently gave an update on our multi-state research for which I serve as Principal Investigator. This NEA-funded Research Lab seeks to answer the question “Do Traditional Arts Apprenticeships sustain cultural practice in ways that are meaningful to communities?” I delivered this presentation via webinar to peer folk arts managers at a folk arts managers Professional Development Institute (PDI) co-sponsored by American Folklore Society and National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. Reviews below exemplify the very positive reception. OFN offers this videorecording of the update to those who were unable to attend the live PDI, which was not recorded.
PDI attendees from 16 states (SC, NM, UT, ID, AL, HI, MS, NE, ND, NV, AR, NY, and others) provided important feedback that will help our research partners articulate the critical insights resulting from the research, and make recommendations that will be valuable to folk arts managers and other professionals in allied fields. As the videorecording indicates, the final report will be published by Creative West in December 2026. Many thanks to our folk arts sites, Texas Folklife (a statewide serving non-profit) and Center for Traditional Music and Dance (a New York City serving non-profit) and our research analysts at Live Oak Consulting.
Reviews in support of these preliminary findings:
“Thank you for sharing your important and broadly-applicable research project with the PDI cohort this afternoon. This framework will be very useful to the field and is both concrete and inspirational. I’m proud of your work and look forward to sharing the full report!
You may have also noticed, but when you spoke about tending to grantee relationships in non bureaucratic ways that honor tradition bearers and support their success, I saw several folks turn on their cameras to nod in agreement. And the fact that you said that to folks who carry that weight of tending those relationships in sometimes lonely ways in their agencies was a nice moment of solidarity […].”
Jessica Turner, Executive Director, American Folklore Society
“I so appreciate your attention to detail in your presentation, Emily, especially the slide where you show how rhetorical choices in grantmaking language has an impact on the ways that folk arts practitioners are asked to orient themselves in relation to their values. You articulated how word choice frames and articulates values, so we need to choose our words carefully and in response to actually articulated community values. Folklorists’ methodologies (deep listening, iterative design, ethics of responsibility, reciprocity and accountability) and on-the-ground experiences building relationships with artists and communities provide opportunities for feedback from folk arts practitioners about how they relate to their traditions and communities that should guide grantmaking language.
While I think that folklorists share the values you articulated, I think that the practice of living out our ideals is always a struggle not only within our bureaucracies, but within ourselves and within communities because we are all navigating complex contexts within hierarchies of power.”
Cassie Rosita Patterson, Special Projects Consultant and Project Manager for the Folk Arts Partnership Professional Development Institute, American Folklore Society
“I also loved the slides where the different artists/culture bearers articulated what became one of the values—to see how these ideas show up differently in different cultures. That gives us a window into your research, as well, how you interpreted the data—which is also very interesting. I love that you applied an ethnographic/qualitative lens to this process.”