WKU News

The Kentucky Folklife Program, part of the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University, received a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the continuation and expansion of the Kentucky Folklife Network.

The statewide outreach network was initiated in 2018 to connect folklorists, community scholars and folk arts organizations around the state. This includes editorial support to manage Kentucky Folklife digital magazine submissions and collaborate with contributors to craft publications, accounting for equitable representation and reflecting rich folklife statewide.

“We are very appreciative that the NEA has again funded the Kentucky Folklife Network and Magazine this year,” said Kentucky Folklife Program and Kentucky Museum Director Brent Bjorkman. “The Kentucky Folklife Program has been an important conduit to documenting and sharing the folk arts, traditional culture and heritage of the Commonwealth since 1989.”

The grant request, written by KFP Folklife Specialist Joel Chapman, also includes stipends for personnel from across the commonwealth to lead four regional workshops, to equip participants to create content for the digital magazine and enhance their ethnographic documentation skills, as well as one statewide gathering of network members to increase collaboration and communication.

“This magazine is another tool we have created to allow Kentuckians, hard at work on many important local projects, to validate and share the voices of their communities to a wider online audience,” Bjorkman said. “This project also shares how the KFP, as an outreach organization based within the nationally known Folk Studies program at Potter College of Arts & Letters helps to further promote the tenets of the WKU strategic plan, in this case most explicitly Community & Beyond.”

• More: View the Kentucky Folklife Digital Magazine at https://kyfolklifemag.org/; learn more about the Kentucky Folklife Program at https://kentuckyfolklife.org/

Contact: Brent Bjorkman, (270) 745-6261

-WKU-

Western Kentucky University prides itself on positioning its students, faculty and staff for long term success. As a student-centered, applied research university, WKU helps students expand on classroom learning by integrating education with real-world applications in the communities we serve. Our hilltop campus is located in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which was recently named by Reader’s Digest as one of the nicest towns in America, just an hour’s drive from Nashville, Tennessee.