News

We so pleased that Lauren Willette has joined our team at Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts this summer. Lauren Willette is a doctoral student in the Heritage Studies program at Arkansas State University. She began an internship with AFTA in May and is focusing her time with us on a project she’s developed titled “Coronavirus Pandemic Response: Gardening and Food Production Resourcefulness in Arkansas.”

Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts is firmly dedicated to building cross-cultural understanding by documenting, presenting, and sustaining Arkansas’ diverse living traditional arts and cultural heritage. At the heart of our work is valuing human dignity and the right to proudly and safely exist in this world. Along with our fellow neighbors and colleagues across the nation, we are watching and witnessing events that remind us of the very real threats to life, justice, and human dignity operating in our communities today.

Contribute to the Quilt Index at Matrix: Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences, Michigan State University.

The University Libraries’ Special Collections division and Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts seek to preserve the personal COVID-19 experiences of University of Arkansas students, faculty and staff. Stories can be submitted online.

Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts remains open, but we are working remotely and unable to conduct in-person fieldwork or event/site visits at this time. Please continue to feel free to call and email. In the meantime, several resources are listed below.

Throughout AFTA’s publications, you may see and hear several terms that appear similar: folk art, traditional art, folkore, folklife, and tradition. What do these terms mean? What’s the difference between each? We thought it might be a good idea to introduce our approach in this article as well.