What is Folklife?
Creative expressions of a culture
Folklife is the creative expression of a culture. Communicated and learned informally among people who have a shared identity, folklife is passed down through time, a testament to its value for the people who practice it. Folklife can be found in many forms: handmade objects, stories, customs, musical traditions, poetry, folksongs, jokes, dances and legends are only a few. Every group that shares a common identity also shares folklife, from people with a common ethnic heritage, to individual families, to the local Elks chapter and the road construction crew.
Folk arts are handmade objects that are created by a culture or folk group. Grown out of ethnicity, occupation, or regional way of life, folk arts reflect the lives and worldviews of a community. They are tied to identity, reflecting it, communicating it, and perpetuating it, both within and outside the community's margins. In Montana, these art forms include cowboy poetry, Blackfeet storytelling, Norwegian hardanger embroidery, Salish basket weaving, Cheyenne traditional singing, and Hmong funeral music and many others.
These traditional art forms are a strong source of pride for the groups that create them, and in many communities their continued existence is threatened. If traditional art forms are lost, so is a piece of a Montana community and an important link to our state's rich cultural heritage.
Montana Arts Council's Folklife Program
The Folklife Program was created to identify, encourage, promote and document the folklife and traditional arts that are a vital part of Montana's cultural landscape.
The Folklife Program:
- Funds apprenticeships to celebrate and support folk art masters who want to pass on their skills;
- Promotes the continuity of folklife in communities;
- Documents the state's folklife and folk arts to create a lasting record;
- Promotes and presents folklife programs to foster public awareness and appreciation of the state's traditional arts and artists;
- Encourages and supports the use of folklife and traditional artist residencies in the classroom as a way to build understanding of our own cultural heritage and those of other ethnic or cultural backgrounds;
- Provides technical and marketing assistance to folk artists and organizations.
