Robert Baron, Director (212) 741-7755

The Folk Arts Program is devoted to perpetuating New York State's living cultural heritage of folk arts. Its primary purpose is to support traditions practiced within communities. It also supports programming that enables general audiences to experience traditional arts from New York State as well as cultures elsewhere in the world.

By definition, folk arts are traditional cultural expressions through which a group maintains and passes on its shared way of life. They express a group's sense of beauty, identity, and values. Folk arts are usually learned informally through performance, by example, or in oral traditions among families, friends, neighbors and co-workers rather than through formal education. Never static, folk arts change as they are adapted to new circumstances while they maintain their traditional qualities.

Traditional folk arts are practiced within and among ethnic, regional, occupational, and religious groups as well as other kinds of communities with a common identity. They include performing traditions in music, dance, and drama; traditional storytelling and other verbal arts; festivals; traditional crafts, visual arts, architecture, the adornment and transformation of the built environment, and other kinds of material folk culture.

The Program emphasizes the protection of the rights of folk artists and the assurance of adequate compensation. The Program supports projects that are developed in close consultation and collaboration with the communities and artists whose traditions are to be presented. Support is not available for programming involving artists who appropriate, interpret, or revive the traditions of other communities. The Program emphasizes support for presentations grounded in the traditional modes of practicing folk art, and not programming involving choreography, theatricalization, or stylization that significantly alters traditions.

Audience development should be directed within as well as outside of the communities represented in an activity. Projects are expected to include interpretive components, such as program booklets or other publications, websites, lecture/demonstrations, spoken introductions to performances, and interpretive signage to aid appreciation and understanding of a tradition's meaning and contexts. Applicants are encouraged to use folklorists, ethnomusicologists, or other specialists for documentation, program development, interpretation of presentations, and program production.

The Program encourages collaborative initiatives carried out on a regional or statewide basis among folk arts programs, and welcomes new applicants.

Evaluative Criteria

Grant requests in this Program are evaluated in accordance with the relevant agency-wide criteria.

Artistic Evaluation

The Council must be able to evaluate an applicant's artistic quality on an ongoing basis. It is the responsibility of all current and prospective applicants to inform the Program of events or workshops at least four weeks in advance of the event date. This is required so that staff, advisory panelists, or program auditors may attend and evaluate the events.