Aaron Banther, a Community Scholar, Cultural Ethnographer, and founder of Our Land of Promise chats with an audience member about his work documenting, preserving, and reclaiming the Black voices in Farristown; Kentucky Crafted Market, March 9, 2024.
What is the Showcasing American Culture through Creative Nonfiction: America 250 (SACTCN) Workshop?
The Kentucky Folklife Program and the Kentucky Folklife digital magazine are thrilled to commemorate “America 250” by highlighting the importance of documenting American culture and tradition through a series of three virtual workshops that will introduce participants to tools for sharing cultural preservation, folk & traditional artistry, expressive culture and folklife practices through published written/multimedia materials and to venues for publishing, presenting, or promoting those materials.
Who can apply for the SACTCN Workshop?
If you are a Kentuckian, 18 years of age or older, and have a cultural project in your pocket that you have been wanting to share with the public, this workshop is for you!
This three-day, purely virtual workshop will teach participants about the world of cultural ethnography, insight on different methods of cultural documentation and project creation (i.e., written publications, documentaries, podcasts, exhibits, etc.), and most importantly, how to communicate the work that you have been involved in with the public. The overall goal of this workshop is to teach participants how to create a project proposal that will highlight your project to the best of your ability. By the end of the workshop, participants will have the opportunity to submit their completed proposals to the Kentucky Folklife Digital Magazine for a chance for publication within the Fall 2026 Issue.
Folklorico dancers “Las Damas” pose for a photo during the “Nuestro Hogar Kentucky, Our Kentucky Home” Kentucky Museum exhibit that shares the experiences of Hispanic populations in the commonwealth; June 2022
What kind of projects could work for the SACTCN Workshops?
We are thankful for the National Endowment for the Arts for funding the SACTCN Workshops and Kentucky Folklife digital magazine publication. Much like the NEA, our workshops, “… are committed to supporting excellent arts projects for the benefit of all Americans.” The kind of projects that would work for SACTCN mirror the projects the NEA fund, that may include:
“Cultural Sustainability & Education: Projects with the primary purpose to support the transmission of tradition and the strengthening of living traditions, preserving traditional lifeways for tribal communities, folk arts education providing exposure and enrichment for youth, adults, and intergenerational groups, etc.”
For example:
- I have been involved with Honduran communities and their food traditions in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and I would love to craft an exhibit centering this community and their foodways that would be displayed at the Kentucky Museum to continue sharing living traditions with the public.
- I have started to attend a quilting club in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, and I would love to start a podcast speaking with quilters all about their specific quilting traditions and the material culture they work with on a daily basis.
“Ethnographic Fieldwork: Projects that seek to connect communities of practice (local or diasporic) to ethnographic fieldwork collections. Such projects might include opportunities for tradition bearers to visit with archival collections, explore materials, and share findings; strategies to utilize fieldwork collections to revitalize lost traditions and endangered languages, or reintroduce repertoire or practices; collaborations between archives and cultural communities to identify collections through crowd-sourcing or regular convenings.”
For example:
- I have been inspired by the work of death doulas, and I would love to submit a proposal to a magazine on death doulas in Hazard, Kentucky, involving oral history interviews with 12 individuals on the traditions that they preserve by doing the work that they do.
- Because I am a descendant of the Jonesville community, I have always wanted to shoot a documentary on my historically Black community that was demolished to make way for Western Kentucky University involving historical documents and oral histories.
- I documented fieldwork and created a photography project surrounding extreme weather survivors in Appalachia, and I would like to organize an online exhibit for communities to access the photos and documentation along with the stories from Appalachian populations.
Brent Bjorkman instructs Community Scholars Alice Gatewood Waddell and Wathetta Ann Bufford on how to document the oral histories of their family and friends connected to the city of Jonesville; Summer of 2022
When will the virtual workshops take place?
These fully virtual workshops will take place over Zoom during the following three Saturdays:
- Saturday, August 8th, 2026
- Saturday, August 15th, 2026
- Saturday, August 22nd, 2026
1:00 to 4:00 pm Central Time/2:00 to 5:00 pm Eastern Time
You must be available each day during the full time frame.
How Can I Apply?
Please click on the link below to fill out the Google Form application to the best of your ability:
When is the Deadline to Apply?
The Deadline to Apply is Monday, July 6 at 11:59 p.m. Central Time.
For any questions, comments, or concerns feel free to reach out to Kentucky Folklife Program Folklife Specialist Camille Maria Acosta:
Email Address: camille.acosta@wku.edu
Phone Number: (270) 745-4133
We hope to see you there!
Kentucky Folklife Program 
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