Description
The North Carolina Folklife Institute (NC Folk) was originally founded in 1974 to produce an annual statewide folklife festival. It has supported various projects and iniatives including the NC Heritage Awards, the Blue Ridge Music Trails, and the production of films and CDS.
NC Folk is particularly known for its expertise in traditional arts documentation through photography, video, interviewing, and audio field recordings. This work has contributed to the materials in the state folklife archive, which NC Folk manages. In 2014-15, it is vastly expanding public access to state folklife by digitizing and cataloging archival materials, implementing a content management system, and creating new interactive features and exhibits on www.ncfolk.org.
Other 2014-15 projects include documenting traditional arts and folklife in Cumberland, Hoke, Robeson, and Scotland Counties, revising the curriculum for the longstanding Community Folklife Documentation Institute so that it can provide more effective community education in low resource and rural areas, and building a series of workshops to connect tourism organizations, arts programmers, and traditional artists, in Warren, Vance, and Halifax Counties.
