Robert Baron, Program Director, rbaron@nysca.org
Deborah Lim, Program Officer, dlim@nysca.org

The Folk Arts Program is devoted to supporting New York State's living cultural heritage of folk arts. Its primary purpose is to maintain the extraordinary cultural and stylistic diversity of folk arts in the State through supporting programming designed to safeguard and perpetuate traditions practiced within communities. It also supports programming that enables general audiences to experience traditional arts from New York State. While we emphasize support for New York traditions, support is also provided for programming involving artists outside of New York State when it directly relates to New York State communities and their traditions.

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.

Identification and support of artists of high artistic quality is our most important priority. Folk artists must be adequately compensated for their work. The practice of folk arts by traditional artists stems from their birthright, community membership or direct participation in the life of a community. The best folk artists generally spend years to master their art forms. They work within artistic conventions shaped and refined over time while creating innovations recognized by other community members.

Projects must be 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. Folk Arts 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.

Organizations are strongly encouraged to develop appropriate methods of presentation, both for programming within a community where a folk art is traditionally practiced and activities presented to general audiences. Traditions can be revitalized when presented at local social occasions in the community where the folk art flourished in the past. Presentations to general audiences in new settings should maintain the style and content of traditional performances. Applicants are encouraged to use live traditional folk musicians to accompany dance presentations.

The interpretation of a folk arts event aids audiences in understanding what may be an unfamiliar artistic experience. 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.

Folk artists are often unrecorded or unrecognized outside of their immediate communities. Organizations are encouraged to identify folk artists through professional field research and document their traditions as part of the development of a project. Applicants are also encouraged to document presentations supported through NYSCA funds.

Individuals with professional expertise in the folk arts should be included, where appropriate, in projects for which support is requested. Folklorists and ethnomusicologists provide valuable skills in documentation, program development, interpretation of presentations, and the production of programs for varied audiences.

NYSCA encourages collaborative initiatives carried out on a regional or statewide basis among folk arts programs.

New applicants are welcome. Applicants are expected to contact Folk Arts staff prior to the registration deadline and arrange for a consultation.

Applicants are limited to one grant request to Folk Arts, with the exception of the Folk Arts Apprenticeships and Regrants/Partnerships categories.

Evaluative Criteria

Grant requests are evaluated in accordance with agency-wide criteria.

Artistic Evaluation

NYSCA 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 staff of public programs or events at least 4 weeks in advance of the event date. This is required so that staff or advisory panelists may attend and evaluate the events. Email notification is welcome at flk@nysca.org.

NYSCA believes in honoring aesthetic and artistic excellence that reflects creative diversity without cultural boundaries and an evaluation process that embraces the widest spectrum of cultural expression offered to the public, in a broad array of settings and contexts -- from classrooms and community centers, to parks and open spaces, to more traditional venues. NYSCA celebrates artistic pluralism and welcomes requests from organizations serving all of the communities that make up New York State. These include the physically challenged, immigrants and other communities with special needs.