The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage plays a large role in providing the connection between communities and learners. In other words there a kay facilitator for the processes of providing exposure for many underserved communities within in our nation and outside of our nation. There relationship with others is quite substantial since they serve more then just one community and are constantly striving to engage with a variety of communities and audiences. Although they are funded by the government and by a variety of private and public donors the organization does their best to tackle those hard conversation about topics like immigration and inclusion. When it comes to my work as a future educator I would like to incorporate many of their resources in my lessons in the future, as well as make them more widely known to other’s working in education. Since their resources on culture and folklike strive to be equitable , inclusive, and accessible. They are also highly trustful and accurate in their information which is very important when used for education.
After those brief thoughts, let me start with saying how informative that meeting with the many Folklife staff was. There’s a lot to takeaway from this meeting, so many topics were covered from my first question, to my second, and their many insightful experiences working for Folklife and how they got there. All of which were so passionate in their work, you could practically feel it when they spoke to us.
Now let’s dive into some specific takeaways, first, Sojin Kim our main speaker of the meeting who served as a coordinator in leading our other guests in conversation. She explained the importance of the organization but also wasn’t afraid to confirm that the organization had also made mistakes along the way. This was very insightful because it lead to a deeper conversation of the proper ways to serve the communities involved in the festival or research. Amalia Cordova touched on this topic as well she explained “Then again, DC is a place of foundational narratives, and they get to disrupt and reconstruct those narratives”, meaning further that it’s important to value those that are different then us and give them space to express their narratives in the most natural way to themselves. Mary Lin expanded on this idea even further, she provided her own insights from her work with a variety of Native American and Indigenous communities. She reflected on how her work made along with the help of other’s made it possible for all of their guests at the festival to speak in their native or first languages with the help of an interpreter so audiences not familiar with the language could understand their narratives. This was a great strive made by the organization to advance their inclusivity and accessibility efforts for events apart of the annual festival.
That brings me to mention how we’d learned so much more about the festival. From the specific events held that different staff participated in curation of, to seeing what the festival might look like each year. They connected the festival with our class purpose by responding to my question: When thinking of democracy and the arts, what is the most valuable way that your institution is able to enforce these values? (Bellow is a range of direct responses from our guests)
Meredith: Folklife Center focuses especially on materials and communities that are underrepresented in other Smithsonians’.
Sojin: It’s also about access. Who has access, how do people get access?
Mary: History of linguistics is a history of extractive methodology – taking language out of community and putting it in manuscripts; the notion that language can be studied separately from people is anti-humanist.
Greg: And then there’s the issue of shared stewardship – making sure that communities not only have access to materials but that they can help control how those materials are managed and used. (Democracy in action!)
So what can we make of this, we can conclude that this sector of the Smithsonian holds a key purpose in connecting with many underrepresented communities to educate a vast majority of people. Importantly they use their platform to show the humanity that we all share and strive to express from our own work in this class. In closing, how will you use your platform to share the story of others or your own?
I’d like to give a final thanks to everyone we met with and heard about from the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Your many stories where intellectually engaging and beyond inspiring.
– L. Elizabeth