Culture Builds Community at the 2010 Cityfolk Festival, Recap

Cityfolk’s outreach program, Culture Builds Community (CBC), has been providing high quality arts engagement opportunities in Dayton neighborhoods for almost five years now. CBC is about breaking down cultural barriers by celebrating the diversity in our neighborhoods in a respectful way, encouraging cultural awareness, building positive identity and self-esteem among youth, enhancing learning and education, and building leadership, civic engagement, skill sets and other important capacities among community residents. Yes, CBC has been an ambitious effort, but it is not necessarily a new concept for Cityfolk.

Since the first National Folk Festival in 1996 through the annual summer festivals that have followed, the Cityfolk Festival has always been a place where community building happens naturally. Over three days, more than sixty thousand people from the region gather downtown Dayton to enjoy the best music, dance and art from all over the world. In experiencing these traditions–some closely familiar, and some completely foreign–a common thread of human understanding and connection is built. Music and the arts naturally have that kind of power.

Our experience in seeing the power of the arts in community development became the impetus for creating CBC, which provides these opportunities year-round. With the success of CBC, everything has come full-circle, and we are incorporating CBC goals more intentionally into the Cityfolk Festival. We began doing this in small ways at the 2008 and 2009 Festivals. This year we received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to raise the bar even higher, and the response from festival goers was unbelievable. Here is what we did:

Developed and delivered a long-term, hands-on, cultural project connected to the theme of the material culture exhibit: Youth and adults in three Dayton neighborhoods worked with the Zoot Theatre Company to create four original plays based on the participants’ own stories. Participants built puppets and masks to go with the characters, and worked with a director to memorize lines and learn acting techniques to bring their story to life. The communities presented their plays at Cityfolk Festival.

Increased and improved the free hands-on art making activities for kids: We hired a group of incredible artists who have a magical skills in working with kids: Puerto Rican-style mask-making with Ken Melendez, Mardi Gras-style mask-making with Jean Howat-Berry, and drum-making with Adam Elfers and Claude Fambrough. K-12 gallery brought their talented staff to lead puppet-making, and Jo McLaughlin led a marionette performance and workshop where kids learned how to operate the marionettes.

Provided opportunities for kids to bring their creations to life: Kids brought their K-12 hand-puppets to Omope Daboiku Carter who helped make them speak through participatory story-telling in African American and Appalachian traditions. Families brought their drums to percussion workshops with Elfers, Fambrough, and Melendez who taught basic African and Latin rhythms and group rhythm-making techniques.

Built in a culminating, collective experience that tied everything together: We held a carnival-style parade toward the end of the day on Saturday and Sunday, where those who participated in the crafts put all of their creations to use – adorned with masks and hand-puppets, beating their hand-made drums, shaking their hand-made rattles and dancing through the festival streets accompanied by professional drummers of Hands that Beat the Drum (among others) and Renee McClendon’s African dance troupe.

Improved the Passport Stations, a youth activity where kids get their very own passports stamped as they visit each station to learn cultural facts about a particular area of the world.

The Culture Builds Community area at the festival was a well-attended and vibrant piece of the festival this year. Photographer Dennie Eagleson, who took all of the photos on this post, remarked:

“The activities were so well thought out. They were simple enough to be accessible to anyone, and yet allowed for so much individual creativity. I saw kids doing some amazing things with their creations. Families were having a great time together! And having everything culminate in such a communal and lively way with the drum circle and parade, was just fabulous. As a photographer, I was like a kid in a candy store. There were so many beautiful moments to capture.”