Smithsonian Folklife

We promote greater understanding and sustainability of cultural heritage across the United States and around the world through research, education, and community engagement. Learn more: folklife.si.edu

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The National Park Service recently sent us these photos of the 2016 Smithsonian Folklife Festival taken from their helicopter.

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Wonder what goes on at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage when we're not round-the-clock busy with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival?

We're traveling to Mali to consult on community engagement in museums, researching legends about atomic bomb testing, attending folklore conferences so we can steal ideas, examining the shift of Asian American identities, and so much more. Read all about it in our new issue of Talk Story: Culture in Motion!

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Check out this piece of Folklife Festival fan art by Katie King! Recognize the Zhenjiang Wu Opera Troupe? 

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Clay sculpture of Barack Obama created by Fu Xinyue at the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival says: DON'T FORGET TO VOTE TODAY!

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The dap, the fist bump, the black power handshake. It goes by many names and carries many meanings. Photographer LaMont Hamilton is devoting his research fellowship with us to unearthing stories about the dap for his project Five on the Black Hand Side.

Read about the dap's history and evolution on Talk Story: http://bit.ly/1odnKKM.

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Cross-cultural #education and active hands-on learning are a huge part of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. We want to make sure our...

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Watch this one hour documentary film exploring the Tibetan diaspora, based on the 2000 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. 

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The Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage asks educators on Edutopia if they've ever used our free resources? Contribute your experiences here: http://bit.ly/1lKjved 

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Open #FlickrGroup: 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival

We continue to be blown away by the moments captured by visitors at the ‪‎2014 Folklife‬ Festival. If you have photos from this year's Festival, we invite you to share them on our open ‪‎Flickr Group - it's grown to over 2,000 photos!

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Click on the map above to explore lesson plans about music from all over the world. This great interactive resource from smithsonianfolkways provides an international prospective on culture and music to incorporate into your curriculum. 

Check out more resources from the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage here.

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Looking for an afternoon pick-me-up? Here are two incredible stories of reunion at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival – one between an artist and the artwork he sold 50 years prior and another among strangers connected through ancient cultural roots.

Watch the video above about sculptor Elkana Ong’esa, one of the most admired and prolific contributors to art in Kenya, and his chance encounter with an early patron, an American who had been studying in Kisii 50 years prior. Not only do they meet and share stories at the 2014 Folklife Festival, but Ong'esa is reunited with his "childhood art."

Folklife program coordinator Jing Li writes about another type of reunion on the Festival blog. This is one in which those coming together have never met, but through language, ancestry, and the sharing of a meal, they feel a deep connection to each other. Read more about their story here.

“Although I can’t understand their language, I feel we are from the same ancestor,” says Liang Xiaoying, one of the performers from Guizhou. “We are the same people. I feel happy and immediately at home around them.” 

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Watch a time lapse of an artist's indigenous pottery techniques of Kenya's Oriang community.

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Click the picture above to check out the first fieldwork photos from Lima, Peru, for the 2015 Folklife Festival!

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Read more from our latest Talk Story, "Just Dance: Connection Life, Death, Traditions, and Communities in L.A." 

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Through sublime rhymes, poet Pages Matam paid tribute to his Cameroonian mother on "Diaspora Day" at the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Hosted by Bomani D. Armah, organized by Busboys and Poets and co-sponsored by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, the session explored cultural expressions from local African and Asian Diasporas

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The result is a piece that does not forcefully combine the different cultural streams but instead juxtaposes them, with distinct son jarocho and bon odori phrasing. The final effect is a shifting soundscape, the musical version of what one might hear while driving with the window down along the stretch of First Street running from Little Tokyo to East L.A.

From the latest Talk Story, the online publication from the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

Read on here.

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Folklife Festivals come and go – just as soon as one ends, we begin to prepare for the next! However, each Festival creates meaningful relationships and future opportunities to share cultural heritage and living traditions. This week, the 2013 Folklife Festival lives on in an exchange co-sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia (Embajada de Estados Unidos en Bolivia) and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The first part of the exchange brought six Kallawaya medicinal practitioners and textile weavers from the Andean highlands of Bolivia to the U.S. to participate in the 2013 Festival program One World, Many Voices. The second part happened just this week and brought members of Oregon’s Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians to Bolivia with the goal of introducing indigenous Bolivians to Native American experts on language and cultural heritage revitalization in the United States. Read more here on the Folklife website: http://bit.ly/1kVZsJ1