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Category: AFC Awards

Thai dancers on-stage at the Library of Congress.

The American Folklife Center: 2024 Year in Review

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

In this post, Nicole Saylor, Director of the American Folklife Center (AFC), highlights the 2024 accomplishments of the AFC. The post demonstrates how 2024 was a busy and productive year for the American Folklife Center, as it continued to meet its mission to document and share the many expressions of human experience to inspire, revitalize, and perpetuate living cultural traditions.

A woman plays banjo and a man plays guitar

The Creek Rocks: AFC’s First Artists in Resonance

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Allow us to introduce Ozarks musicians Mark Bilyeu and Cindy Woolf (The Creek Rocks). The duo are our very first Artists in Resonance, and are here for a week of in-depth research. Mark and Cindy, who live in Springfield, Missouri, were chosen from among 22 applicants to the Center’s Artists in Resonance Fellowship. The fellowship is intended to support artists in creating new musical works inspired by and sourced from collection materials in the Center’s archives. During their fellowship, Cindy and Mark are focusing on the materials Sidney Robertson Cowell recorded in Missouri in 1936 and 1937 for the Resettlement Administration. According to the duo, the items in the collection from Springfield, despite probably being the earliest audio documents of folk music in and around that city, "seem to be virtually unknown to our local historical memory, save for but a very few figures immersed in the study of the Ozarks and its folklore." Their goal is to produce a full-length album of songs from the collection in new arrangements by The Creek Rocks. In this post you can read more about The Creek Rocks, find links to their work and to the other archival collections they’ve visited, and find out how to apply for future fellowships.

A group photo of four Lumbee elders during their regular mall walk in Dundalk, Maryland.

AFC’s Community Collections Grantee Spotlight: Ashley Minner Jones on Beyond Baltimore Street: Living Lumbee Legacies

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

This post is an excerpt of an interview with 2024 American Folklife Center Community Collections Grant recipient Dr. Ashley Minner Jones on her project, Beyond Baltimore Street: Living Lumbee Legacies, as part of the Library of Congress Of the People: Widening the Path initiative.

A man sits on a desk in an office lined with books

AFC Fellowship and Award Recipients 2024

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress is pleased to announce the 2024 recipients of its competitive annual fellowships and awards programs: the Archie Green Fellowship and the Gerald E. and Corinne L. Parsons Fund Award. This year, these awards went to six projects throughout the United States, whose proposals were reviewed and selected by internal and external panels at the American Folklife Center. Laurena Davis of Clifton, Colorado, received an Archie Green Fellowship for “Taking Stock: Ranching Women of Western Colorado.” Dr. Sarah Beth Nelson of Whitewater, Wisconsin, received Archie Green support for “Community Builders: Library Workers in Wisconsin.” Documentary filmmaker Sophie Dia Pegrum of Woodland Hills, California, received an Archie Green Fellowship for her project “Guardians of the Bees,” featuring interviews with beekeepers. Folklorist Kathryn Noval of Silver Spring, Maryland, received Archie Green funding for her research project “Professional Body Piercers in the 21st Century: Rooted in Passion.” Dr. Sophie Abramowitz, (Brooklyn, New York) received a Parsons Award to support onsite research in AFC collections for the expanded LP reissue of "Jailhouse Blues: Women’s a cappella songs from the Parchman Penitentiary, Library of Congress Field Recordings, 1936 and 1939." Finally, L. Renée, (Virgina), a poet and writer, received a Parsons Award to support her research on Black communities in coal mining and tobacco farming towns of Southwest Virginia and West Virginia.

Three men on a stage. Pete Seeger smiles at Andy Wallace. Wallace and Mike Rivers play guitars.

Announcing the Artists in Resonance Fellowship

Posted by: Stephen Winick

We’re very happy to invite applications for our brand new Artist in Resonance Fellowships at the AFC to support artists in creating new musical works inspired by and sourced from collection materials in the American Folklife Center Archives. One Fellowship of $10,000 will be awarded annually by the American Folklife Center. The deadline for the first Artists in Resonance award is April 5, 2024. In this blog post you'll find links to help you apply, as well as the story of the founding of the fellowship with the help of the late Mike Rivers.

An outdoor photo of homes being rehabilitated in the historic district Larry Johnson III (Tre) removes debris from a historic home that he and his father Larry Johnson Jr. are restoring in Tenth Street Historic District.

Catching up with Community Collections Grant Recipients: If Tenth Street Could Talk with Tameshia Rudd-Ridge and Jourdan Brunson

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

The following is an excerpt of an interview with Tameshia Rudd-Ridge and Jourdan Brunson of the Dallas, Texas Community Collections Grant project, If Tenth Street Could Talk, as part of the Library of Congress Of the People blog series featuring awardee of the American Folklife Center's Community Collections Grant program.