Photo by Morgan Miller
The Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program earned one of the highest honors offered to humanities programs earlier this month when the 2011 Helen and Martin Schwartz Prize was awarded to the soon-to-be 10-year-old program based at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH) in Charlottesville. VFH and the Folklife Program were recognized at the annual National Humanities Conference, held this year in St. Petersburg, Florida.
“The Apprenticeship Program is the most important and rewarding thing we do in the Virginia Folklife Program,” declared Jon Lohman, state folklorist and VFH Folklife Program director. “It helps pass along cherished traditions of Virginia, and has a direct impact on individual artists. We are honored and thrilled to be recognized and bestowed with this prestigious award.”
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities’ Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program pairs experienced Masters with eager Apprentices or Apprentice teams in order to help ensure that a particular Virginia folkway is passed on in ways that are conscious of history and faithful to tradition. As a winner of the 2011 prize, one judge lauded the program as “unique in its apprenticeship approach to the preservation of traditional folkways and arts…and clearly a monumental force in the effort to save disappearing art forms.”
The Schwartz Prize, administered by the Federation of State Humanities Councils, is awarded annually to up to three programs for outstanding work in the public humanities. The Schwartz Prize is awarded to councils for innovative programs that have had a significant impact on citizens, organizations, or communities in their states.
Since 2002, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities’ Folklife Program—the state center for the documentation, presentation, and preservation of Virginia’s rich cultural traditions— has supported year-long Apprenticeships in a wide range of traditional folkways. The Apprenticeship Showcase, a public event celebrating the program, has grown into a Folklife festival with more than 300 visitors annually. Audio and video recordings of the apprenticeship teams are broadcast on its YouTube channel and website. Five radio shorts – each with an estimated public radio audience of 37,500 – were broadcast in 2009 and 2010. In the past five years, the program has reached an estimated audience of 100,000 at concerts, festivals, and workshops and 2.2 million through the media.
The Folklife Apprenticeship Program is an initiative of the Virginia Folklife Program, which documents, presents, and supports Virginia’s living cultures, traditions, and folkways. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities encourages discovery and connection through the humanities by supporting and producing programs for a wide public audience. It works with individuals and communities to explore the past, confront issues of the present, and discover a promising future. For more information visit VirginiaHumanities.org.
