My name is Ellen McHale and I serve as the Executive Director of New York Folklore. I am pleased to offer you my testimony as part of today’s Arts Day Hearing.
New York Folklore is a statewide service organization for folk and traditional artists and grassroots community organizations. We are headquartered in Schenectady. We work in partnership with several regional folk arts organizations and programs embedded within NYSCA supported arts councils, which all serve distinct regions within New York State. In the aggregate, the network of folk arts organizations and programs serve about 38 of New York’s 62 counties. A decrease over the last 28 years. The amount of NYSCA support to folk arts is modest, but the impact is large.
Folk and traditional arts are those arts that reflect a community’s cultural heritage, sense of identity, and sense of place. Folk and Traditional arts are learned at the community level, from one person to another. They are learned over a long period through extended mentoring, or by immersion and observation within the community. Individuals who engage with folk and traditional arts develop a sense of community, cultural pride, and personal achievement that improves their well-being. Folk art expressions include music and dance, the hand-made object, traditional building techniques, food traditions, community belief practices, and much much more. Public facing folk arts programs and festivals such as Dia de los Muertos in Medina; the community documentation workshops of the Arts Council of the Southern Finger Lakes in Corning or the Beverly Robinson Folklife Program of Mind-builders in the Bronx; directly support artists and communities.
Arts service organizations that serve folk and traditional arts are directly assisting artists to develop as economic and cultural engines, as they provide opportunities for artists. At New York Folklore, staff members mentor folk artists to help them develop and expand their arts-related income. We assist folk artists to make connections with educational institutions and help them to develop skills as teaching artists, working alongside Local Learning: the National Network for Folk Arts in Education. Folk Arts programs and organizations such as ours identify cultural leadership and offer direct support in the form of grant writing, opportunities to convene and present their art, and individualized assistance, sometimes in languages other than English. These are effective means to assist communities in maintaining their cultural heritage. It is this sort of artist-centered and community-driven process that is supported by the folk and traditional arts network in New York, supported by NYSCA
The transmission of expressive culture is at the heart of traditional arts. Learning a traditional art not only involves training in the skills and techniques of an art form, it also requires experience in the cultural aspects of knowledge, community values, etiquette, and worldview. Haudenosaunee basket-makers, for example, not only learn the skills of making a proper basket, they also learn how to identify a “basket tree,” how to pound the black ash for splints, and they learn the utilitarian and ceremonial uses for the different basket forms. They are also learning to practice principles of stewardship and how to identify the impacts of climate on the ash tree. Support for folk and traditional arts and culture can provide an important sense of identity and well-being. For newcomer communities, folk arts can combat feelings of isolation, or help one to reclaim an identity that may have become dormant due to migration or the push and pull of assimilation. The public presentation of folk and traditional arts provides important cross-generational learning and cross-cultural connectors to promote greater understanding across this diverse state of New York.
Thank you