Thank You for Your AZ Gives Day Donations!
Because of your support, we are able to fund 7 additional traditional artists and culture bearers.
To date, thanks to individual and institutional donations, our Traditional Artist and Culture Bearers Emergency Relief Fund has assisted 83 people with $500 each, totaling $43,500 in direct assistance to artists hardest hit by Covid. Many traditional artists and culture bearers in communities across Arizona and the Southwest have lost not only loved ones, but also their means of sustaining themselves and their communities with a year of shutdowns, layoffs, limited events to showcase and sell their art.
You can still donate to the Fund, providing direct support to traditional artists and culture bearers.
If you are a traditional artist or culture bearer, you can apply for the fund here.
We are updating a list of additional resources and relief opportunities here.
Seeking nominations for our 2021 Master-Apprentice Artist Award
Know an amazing traditional artist or culture bearer in Arizona? Our annual Master-Apprentice Award provides direct support to artists working in traditional forms of heritage-based practices in passing on their artform to an apprentice (or group of apprentices). Awards support both artists and apprentices in a one-year teaching-learning relationship that includes one-on-one mentorship and hands-on experience in a traditional artistic practice. The award prioritizes apprentices learning from artists within their own cultural traditions. Award money can be used to support the master artist, offset costs of raw materials, and support any travel essential to the exchange.
(Josefina Lizarraga, 2020 Master-Artist Awardee. Photo by Steven Meckler)
Master-Apprentice Artist Awardees 2020
A capoeirista, a Navajo weaver, a horse hair and agave fiber rope maker, a mariachi folk violinist, a steel pan craftsman, a paper flower maker, an O’odham silversmith, an ancestral foodways chef, glass blower, and a folk musician are the 2020 recipients of the annual Southwest Folklife Alliance (SFA) Master-Apprentice Award. The recipients were nominated by community members and selected by a panel of cultural leaders and peers. Artists/tradition bearers receive $5,000 each and emerging-artist mentees receive $500 to support the transmission of traditional knowledge and work together for one year. Read about this year’s awardees here.
End-of-life Practices
End-of-life practices in Tucson’s Muslim, Jewish, Chinese, and LGBTQ Communities. (Videos by Cáit Ní Síomón, trailer by Nate McKowen)
Our End of Life: Continuum program shares cultural knowledge about traditions, expressions, and practices associated with end of life, grief, mourning and death in Southern Arizona. Four short short videos explore Tucson’s Muslim, Jewish, Chinese, and LGBTQ communities. The videos were created n collaboration with the Arizona End of Life Care Partnership as educational resources for members of those communities, but hold value for the general public. We hope they invite reflection on end-of-life traditions and encourage you to spend time thinking and planning for that eventuality. A helpful guide for this is here, and additional resources based on SFA documentation and events are here. View all four videos here.
Our monthly online journal, BorderLore, aims to document, share, and elevate folklife in the borderlands region (Arizona, New Mexico, southern California, southern Utah, west Texas, and northern Mexico), seeking what is often “hidden in plain view.” By celebrating the “embellished ordinary,” we hope to connect people across culture, tradition, and geography. Read Borderlore here.
Building Capacity
As part of our commitment to cultural transmission and equity, we work with communities and institutions to build capacity in the following ways:
