Creative Currents Peer Learning Fellowship
In 2025 The Southwest Folklife Alliance was pleased to oversee the Creative Currents Peer Learning Fellows pilot program. This travel fellowship offered each awardee $6,500 in fellowship funds, $2,000 in travel support, and $1,000 for their peer learning partner. To ensure equal access, additional funds were available upon request for language interpretation and accessibility-related supplies.
The initiative was designed to expand the scope of knowledge-sharing in the folk arts sector, beyond the apprenticeship model, by piloting a peer-learning approach that cross-pollinated partnerships among folklorists, cultural workers, and other heritage arts animators. Participants deepened their knowledge, built capacity across roles and functions in folklore practice, and helped strengthen support systems for traditional artists and tradition bearers.
Impact
Eleven fellows explored the following issues in the structured learning exchange. Throughout the fellowship, artists, culture bearers, arts administrators, and folklorists examined social issues affecting their work and the preservation of traditional cultural knowledge through a structured learning exchange. Fellows designed and carried out a one-on-one exchange, participated in three group learning sessions, and received personalized mentorship.
The social issues the 2025 Creative Currents Fellows explored included:
- Preservation (archiving, documentation, learning cultural practices or artistic techniques, teacher training)
- Changing Demographics (teaching across cultures, gentrification, migration, aging or loss of culture bearers)
- Social Change (how a traditional artform can impact a community)
- Climate Change (impact on materials, migration, water harvesting)
- Economic Development (networking, geographic barriers, changing markets)
The 2025 Creative Currents Peer Learning Fellowship was made possible through the support of Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.
2025 Fellows
Peter Strong, South Dakota – Racing Magpie leadership traveled 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 explored how creative placemaking and cooperative strategies can nourish both culture and economy. This learning partnership supported the preservation of living traditions and created replicable tools for economic resilience through foodways and the arts.
Erin Swenson-Klatt, Minnesota – Erin traveled to the John C. Campbell Folk School and participated in their Appalachian Heritage Week programming to better understand how the Folk School works and how JCCFS serves and is shaped by their community.
Chivonne Marlow, Iowa – Vesterheim, The National Norwegian-American Museum and Folk School, traveled to Tucson, Arizona to observe how Tucson Meet Yourself draws participants into the festival experience and engages the public with diverse folk art forms.
Corey Travis, Tennessee – Memphis Youth Arts Initiative engaged 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 traveled to the International African American Museum to observe how the Museum engages with Black culture as she developed Black Heritage experiences for her community in Alaska. The focus of Jasmin’s programs was on ancestry, origins, cultural ways of knowing during trials and tribulations, and how culture serves as a guide forward.
Tafilisaunoa Toleafoa, Alaska – Tafi worked with a respected, Hawai’i-based Lomi Lomi practitioner, strengthening cultural ties between Samoan and Hawaiian communities through traditional healing practices and deepening understanding of the connection between our bodies and culture. Her project explored how these Indigenous wellness traditions can be preserved and shared across generations and regions.
Valerie Mendoza, Kansas – Valerie worked with Alisha Vasquez to learn about the creation and maintenance of a community-based historic Mexican American museum in Tucson, Arizona, advancing goals related to communications, community engagement, and the development of a cultural institution in her home community of Topeka, Kansas.
Tom Farris, Oklahoma – Tom learned the art of sandcasting, one of the oldest forms of metalsmithing, from Tim Blueflint of Clearlake Oaks, California.
Tracey Brown, Tennessee – Tracey traveled to Atlanta, Georgia to shadow film producer Ty Walker in an immersive, hands-on capacity, observing and learning 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 learned engaging and accessible strategies for teaching bomba to those who know very little about the art form.