NYFS Resources: NYSCA Folk Arts Program

A Who’s Who of Our Universe—Connect to organizations allied with the New York Folklore Society in fields of

Folklore and Folk Arts
Archives       Arts       Education
Ethnography & Anthropology       Ethnomusicology & Music
Heritage Tourism       Historic Preservation
History, Libraries and Museums

This universe is growing, so come back often.

ALLIED ORGANIZATIONS

Ethnology and Anthropology Organizations

History Organizations, Libraries & Museums

New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org

ORGANIZATIONS

Regional and National Folklore Organizations

NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS
FOLK ARTS PROGRAM

The Folk Arts Program at the New York State Council on the Arts, founded in 1985, is devoted to perpetuating New York State’s living cultural heritage of folk arts and maintaining the extraordinary cultural and stylistic diversity of New York’s traditional arts. It provides funding for over 70 nonprofit organizations each year. Its primary mission is to support traditions practiced within communities. The Program also supports programming that enables general audiences to experience traditional arts from New York State as well as from cultures elsewhere in the world. Funding is provided through various funding categories, each with its own eligibility and evaluative criteria, including the following categories open to new applicants:

Presentation
This category includes a wide variety of activities, including concerts, festivals, lecture/demonstrations, residencies, slide talks, and traditional storytelling programs. Support in this category can cover documentation costs as well as programming, interpretation, and consultant expenses.
Folk Arts Apprenticeships
Funding is available to enable an individual with demonstrated ability in a folk art to study as an apprentice with a master of a traditional folk art within the master’s own community. This category is exempt from the limitation of three funding requests per applicant.
Exhibition
Support is provided for exhibitions that present the work of living folk artists, explore issues in the folk arts, or interpret the traditional culture of a community through its folk arts.
Services to the Field
This category includes professional development workshops for the documentation and presentation of folk arts, promotional materials and services for folk artists and conferences, and publications that contribute to the public understanding of a folk art.

In addition to providing funding for folk arts activities to applicants in nonprofit organizations, the Folk Arts Program also undertakes special initiatives, workshops, and conferences. Each year it organizes the New York State Arts Roundtable with the Cultural Resources Council of Syracuse and Onondaga County. At the Roundtable, participants discuss their current work in small group discussions and participate in panels about current issues in the field. The Program also collaborates with the New York Folklore Society (NYFS), which administers a statewide Mentoring and Professional Development Program for Folklife and the Traditional Arts.

The annual deadline to register to apply to NYSCA is March 1. Registration and application occurs on line, at www.nysca.org. For further information, please contact:

Robert Baron
Director, Folk Arts Program
New York State Council on the Arts
175 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
212/741-7755
800/510-0021 (toll-free from within NY State)
rbaron@nysca.org

New and continuing applicants are strongly encourages to contact the Folk Arts Program Staff prior to submitting an application.

Is your organization missing from our resources page? E-mail us with your organization name, applicable program or center name, address, telephone and fax numbers, e-mail address, director’s name and title, an organizational description of 75 words or less, the URL of your web site if you have one, and the contact person for your web site. We will consider all submissions but reserve the right to select and edit those we feel are most appropriate for this site.