Current projects

Singing together brings communities together!

Throughout 2024, the Center for Belonging  Folk School will host and facilitate a series of community singing leadership and listening experiences! These experiences will provide valuable insights, resources, and practical techniques to integrate the power of song into folk schools.

We hope that this project seeds an expansion of community singing through folk schools.

• Interweaving song into the daily rhythms of folk schools;
• Creating belonging and well being through song;
• Supporting communities to better cooperate across differences; and
• Ensuring song leaders and singing have a place in folk schools.

This project is funded by the Office of Research and Evaluation at AmeriCorps under Grant No. 22REACA001 through the National Service and Civic Engagement research grant competition. Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of, or a position that is endorsed by, AmeriCorps.

Bridging and Bonding: An African American Craft Alliance and John C Campbell Folk School Partnership

The Bridging and Bonding collaboration aims to increase access, opportunity, and visibility for African American craft artists at the John C. Campbell Folk School (JCCFS) and beyond. JCCFS and the new African American Craft Alliance (launched in 2020 as a Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage’s African American Craft Initiative), will work together to develop a scalable and replicable model for equity and inclusion at folk schools through community building and learning exchange opportunities, culminating in a large-scale convening at JCCFS in 2025. Over the course of the project, activities and resources will be developed to improve social cohesion and collaboration within the folk schools and beyond, leveraging a community-based approach to sustainable change. 

Between January 2024 and June 2025 the partnership will

• Launch an online Community of Practice for African American Craft Alliance members;
• Utilize and share project templates and frameworks to inspire community building processes within JCCFS and beyond; and
  
• Incubate an African American/Heritage Folk School/Craft School

This project is funded by the Office of Research and Evaluation at AmeriCorps under Grant No. 22REACA001 through the National Service and Civic Engagement research grant competition. Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of, or a position that is endorsed by, AmeriCorps.

Living Traditions Corps

Improving rural community health in Washington State by creating replicable folk school-like model for strengthening social cohesion

During 2023-24, the Folk Education Network is partnering with AmeriCorps, Washington State Parks, and other partners to develop a Folk School-like model for civic engagement. The goal is to reduce rural isolation and increases community health through building connections and networking resources. This planning grant, funded by AmeriCorps, will develop a three-year operation grant proposal to:

• Identify site location partners to hold community gatherings
• Identify and connect AmeriCorps members from the local communities to the location partners
• Connect site and AmeriCorps partners with community hosts to identify community needs
• Coordinate initial hosted community gatherings to begin making connections among people to the knowledge and resources they want
• Develop and expand a replicable model that can be used in other states with a variety of partners

This project is funded in part by the Office of Research and Evaluation at AmeriCorps under Grant No. 22REACA001 through the National Service and Civic Engagement research grant competition and a 2023 ServeWA Planning Grant. Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of, or a position that is endorsed by, AmeriCorps.

Folk School Alliance Community of Practice