Music Makers Lecture and Panel Discussion

October 3, 2019, 5pm at the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences, Charleston, WV

Led by curator Jessica O’Hearn, Music Maker Foundation founder Tim Duffy will be joined by West Virginia State Folklorist Emily Hilliard and Clay County Fiddler John Morris, to discuss the importance of supporting artists with opportunities and funding and preserving artistic and cultural history. Attendees will learn how the Music Makers Foundation and the West Virginia Folklife program have assisted many artists and practitioners to forge a path to success, and preserve musical traditions.

This event is free and open to the public.

Vermont Folklife Center Summer Institute

This August, Emily will be teaching a one-day workshop at the Vermont Folklife Center’s Discovering Community Summer Institute at The Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

From the VFC:

Our Discovering Community Summer Institute introduces educators to the methods of ethnographic field research and the techniques of documentary media-making and digital storytelling as a means to facilitate meaningful student involvement with the communities in which they live. Working with community resources and digital media tools offers rich opportunities for personalized, student-led learning experiences. This student-directed research model facilitates the development of transferable skills such as clear and effective communication, responsible and involved citizenship, creative and practical problem solving, and informed and integrative thinking

Thank you to Trish Denton and Mary Wesley of the Vermont Folklife Center for the invitation.

West Virginia Folklife Progam Receives Gerald E. And Corinne L. Parsons Fund Award

The Gerald E. and Corinne L. Parsons fund was founded by American Folklife Center reference librarian Gerry Parsons (1940-1995) in honor of his parents. Parsons Fund Awards provide support to bring people to the Library of Congress to make use of primary ethnographic materials housed at AFC and elsewhere at the Library.

Emily Hilliard, West Virginia’s State Folklorist, was awarded a Parsons Fund Award for a one-week research trip to research AFC’s collection of sound recordings, photographs, field notes, and ephemera related to West Virginia, focusing particularly on archival content related to African Americans and other cultural communities whose “presence and contributions are often marginalized in historical and vernacular culture narratives of the Mountain State.” Her research will inform ongoing and future work of the West Virginia Folklife Program and culminate in a series of multimedia blog posts.