SFA worked with Yaqui and Yoeme communities in Sonora and Arizona to explore connections between the cultivation and preparation of wheat and the tribe’s resiliency and cultural preservation. We assisted communities in developing a strategic plan for its economic recovery using oral histories, test planting sites, and artisanal cooking workshops.
Folklife PAR is SFA’s participatory action research methodology — a framework for community-led inquiry that brings a folklorist’s lens to the research process, centering the creative and expressive practices through which communities already make meaning together as both data and driver of change.
La Doce Barrio Foodways Project was yearlong project along the food corridor of Tucson’s South 12th Ave—known as “La Doce.” It revealed the importance of local knowledge and food heritage to community cohesion and health and the potential for future community-based economic development and local governance.
In partnership with Regeneración—an intergenerational grassroots organization based on Tucson’s Southside—and neighborhood residents, the Southwest Folklife Alliance is transforming Louis’ Market, a historic property at 4001 S. 12th Avenue, into a permanent Center for Cultural Organizing in La Doce.
Disability Cultures Folklife is building something that hasn’t existed before in our region: a sustained, community-rooted investment in the cultural knowledge and creative life of disabled people.
VozFrontera was a program for youth engagement, leadership, and local arts incubation in Nogales, Arizona. It offers documentary arts mentoring with youth, artist- and scholar in-residence programs, and co-working lab space for young leaders and entrepreneurs.