The Southwest Folklife Alliance is pleased to announce the 2025 Creative Currents Peer Learning Fellows! This travel fellowship offers the awardee $6500, $2000 in travel funds, and $1000 to their peer learning partner. To provide equal access, additional funds may be requested for language interpretation and accessibility-related supplies.
The purpose of this initiative is to expand the scope of knowledge-sharing in the folk arts sector, beyond the apprenticeship model, by piloting a peer-learning initiative that cross-pollinates partnerships among folklorists, cultural workers, and other heritage arts animators. Participants will deepen knowledge, build capacity across roles and functions in folklore practice, and help strengthen support systems for traditional artists and tradition bearers.
During the Fellowship, artists, culture bearers, arts administrators, and folklorists will examine social issues affecting their work and the preservation of traditional cultural knowledge through a structured learning exchange. Fellows will design and carry out a one-on-one exchange, participate in three group learning sessions, and receive personalized mentorship.
The social issues the 2025 Creative Current Fellows will take on include:
- Preservation (archiving, documentation, learning cultural practices or artistic techniques, teacher training, etc.)
- Changing Demographics (teaching across cultures, gentrification, migration, aging or loss of culture bearers, etc.)
- Social Change (how a traditional artform can impact your community, etc.)
- Climate Change (impact on materials, migration, water, harvesting, etc.)
- Economic Development (networking, geographic barriers, changing markets, etc.)
2025 Fellows:
Peter Strong, South Dakota – Racing Magpie leadership will travel to San Juan, Puerto Rico to meet with Agua Sol y Sereno for an exchange of community engagement strategies.
Connie Fiorella Fitzpatrick, Kansas – Alongside Yura Sapi, Connie will explore how creative placemaking and cooperative strategies can nourish both culture and economy. This learning partnership will support the preservation of living traditions and create replicable tools for economic resilience through foodways and the arts.
Erin Swenson-Klatt, Minnesota – Erin will travel to the John C Campbell Folk School and participate in their Appalachian Heritage Week programming to better understand how the Folk School works and about how JCCFS serves and is shaped by their community.
Chivonne Marlow, Iowa – Vesterheim The National Norwegian-American Museum and Folk School will travel to Tucson Arizona to observe how Tucson Meet Yourself festival finds ways to draw their participants into the festival experience and how they engage the public with diverse folk art forms.
Corey Travis, Tennessee – Memphis Youth Arts Initiative will engage in a best practice exchange with Brooklyn United Music and Arts focused on youth cross cultural exchange, leadership development, and community engagement strategies.
Jasmin Smith, Alaska – Jasmin will travel to the International African American Museum to observe how the Museum engages with Black culture as she plans to develop Black Heritage experiences for her community in Alaska. The focus of Jasmin’s programs would be on ancestry, origins (knowing where you come from), cultural ways of knowing during trials and tribulations, and where we are going (how we use culture to get there).
Tafilisaunoa Toleafoa, Alaska – Tafi will work study with a respected, Hawai’i-based Lomi Lomi practitioner, strengthening cultural ties between Samoan and Hawaiian communities through traditional healing practices and understanding the connection between our bodies and culture. Her project will explore how these Indigenous wellness traditions can be preserved and shared across generations and regions.
Valerie Mendoza, Kansas – Valerie will work with Alisha Vasquez to learn about the creation and maintenance of a community-based historic Mexican American museum in Tucson, Arizona, and to advance multiple goals related to communications, community engagement and the creation of an institution in my home place, Topeka, Kansas.
Tom Farris, Oklahoma – Tom will learn the art of sandcasting, one the oldest forms of metalsmithing, from Tim Blueflint of Clearlake Oaks, California.
Tracey Brown, Tennessee – Tracey plans to travel to Atlanta, Georgia to shadow film producer Ty Walker in an immersive, hands-on capacity. She will observe and learn the full scope of what it takes to create a high-quality film from concept to execution.
Miriam Padilla, Utah – Through an exchange with bomba artist Jeanitza Aviles Calderon, Miriam will learn engaging and accessible strategies for teaching bomba to those who know very little about the art form.
The 2025 Creative Currents Peer Learning Fellowship was made possible through the support of Maragret A. Cargill Philanthropies.
