It’s a process to catalog, analyze and preserve the intangible and tangible cultural assets of a specified geographic area, and it’s recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as an essential community planning tool. Tom Borrup, author of “The Creative Community Builder’s Handbook” and community development …
Archives for June 2015
Rooted in the Past
Stories of Tucson, as yet untold, are just underfoot. Archaeologists and preservationists like Tucson’s Historic Preservation Officer Dr. Jonathan Mabry, are the explorers who piece together what is an archaeological puzzle map -- one guide in city planning of today. Dr. Mabry’s fieldwork has helped the city discover settlements, preserved …
The Possibilities of Personal Geographies
His love of cartographic ephemera began with family travels, with SFA Visiting Folklorist and Archie Green Fellow Nic Hartmann scooping up roadmaps, tourist guides and other travel goodies. It was all fodder for an emerging folklorist, and what inspired his lifelong fascination with maps and map-making. Nic shares some storytelling and images of …
Foods to Navigate Home
No need to be culinary cartographers, to understand how food transcends boundaries and assists us in exploring new roads. While food inspires us in a form of global navigation, it also defines a channel to explore local tastes and place. Certainly this is so in the landscapes of Southern Arizona, where wild foods distinctive to our region have …
Art, Culture & Pinpointing Place
Artists make extensive inventories as part of their work; they use visual diagrams, sketch their subjects and catalog material culture to build that sense of place from the landscapes they explore. So it isn’t surprising to page through the report prepared for the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC) People, Land, Arts, Culture and Engagement (Place) …
Remembering Joe
JOE WILSON, 1938-2015 We lost one of the great activists and advocates for the traditional arts on May 15. Joe Wilson served as Director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts from 1976 until 2004. During this time the NCTA expanded the annual National Folk Festival, transforming it into into a traveling, three-year event designed to …