Founded in 1974 by folklorist Jim Griffith and his wife, Loma Griffith, Tucson Meet Yourself is an annual celebration of the living traditional arts of Southern Arizona's and Northern Mexico's diverse ethnic and folk communities. The free, three-day event features hundreds of artisans, home cooks, dancers, musicians and special exhibits that …
Master-Apprentice Artist Award Program
We provide direct support for master traditional artists living in Arizona to pass on art, culture, and heritage practices to apprentice learners through the annual SFA Master-Apprentice Award. The award is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and Arizona Commission on the Arts. The award supports a master artist or …
End of Life Programs
SFA’s End of Life: Continuum (EOL) project shares cultural knowledge about traditions, expressions, and practices associated with end of life, grief, mourning and death in Southern Arizona’s folk, ethnic, occupational, faith-based and alternative communities. In 2019, as part of our Continuum: End of Life program, SFA facilitated a series of …
VozFrontera
A city without culture is a dead city. You just live to eat and work. Where there’s no creativity, no spontaneity, it’s a challenge to get your dreams going. –Gustavo Aranda, High school music teacher VozFrontera is a program for youth engagement, leadership, and local arts incubation in Nogales, Arizona. It offers documentary arts mentoring …
Learning Folklife
SFA Documentary Cohort In 2018-19, our educational focus has been in convening a cohort of documentary artists in Southern Arizona for learning exchanges in ethnographic methods, peer mentoring, and folklife immersion. Learn about cohort members here. This Is Folklife Classes & Workshops We offer a periodic series of classes & workshops …
Border Tuner: An installation to amplify and illuminate border voices
Story and photographs by Kimi Eisele The first thing I saw were lights in the sky, the kind of lights that fan the night to announce inaugurations for new buildings or big car sales. But this wasn’t any kind of grand opening or sale. It was an art installation: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Border Tuner, which spanned a stretch of the international …