Community Scholars Program

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The Community Scholars Program is an ethnographic training course facilitated by the Kentucky Folklife Program and their partner the Kentucky Arts Council, part of the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology,  and provide a multi-week educational opportunity for Kentuckians interested in finding, documenting and presenting community culture, folklife and traditional arts. Over the past 22 years the Community Scholars Program has certified over 250 scholars exploring their own local culture around the Commonwealth.

 

Participants are introduced to documentation techniques, ethics of working with communities, research and archiving methods, presentation of culture, grant writing and project development. They become part of a statewide Community Scholar network, promoting and advocating for traditional culture by sharing resources with local audiences, visiting tourists, teachers, students and other groups. The program is flexible in format and content, based on the trainees’ priorities and availability.

 

In the summer of 2022, seven Southcentral Kentucky-based teams took part to explore focused fieldwork research pertaining to Bowling Green’s former Jonesville neighborhood. This research, based on intimate oral interviews with former residents of Jonesville and their descendents whose lives have been profoundly affected by the neighborhood’s demolition, formed the body of this interpretive exhibit through the intimate voices of these residents and families dispossessed of their homes.