Folklife Festival returns to the National Mall after two years
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The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is back! This annual summertime cultural celebration returns to D.C. this week after a two year hiatus.
This time, it features the cultural traditions of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Earth Optimism, activities showcasing Smithsonian projects and research aimed at inspiring environmental consciousness. There are free concerts every evening and delicious Emirati food at events like Bedouin Cooking, where you can learn about Emirati cooking techniques from chef Ahmed Al Marar. You can also try some java at the Emirati Coffee Demonstration.
Sharing perspectives on environmental issues and unique culinary practices, the festival includes demonstrations, performances, webinars, discussion sessions and special evening events. All the performances, workshops, activities and events are free. Attendees can enjoy a variety of activities online and in-person that will introduce them to fascinating aspects of Emirati culture.
The Emirates, as the country is also known, is located on the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It’s a federation of seven emirates including Dubai, the International tourism destination. But its economy is largely powered by oil production, which also fuels climate change, making the Smithsonian’s pairing UAE culture with the Earth Optimism theme rather puzzling.
Besides showcasing emirati culture and cuisine, a priority of this summer’s festival is to impact the community with the Earth Optimism program, a selection of immersive activities that seek to inspire a sense of stewardship and connection to our natural environment. With conversation, events and activities, visitors will learn how to take local actions to make a positive impact on the environment.
The Folklife Festival, started in 1967, has become a national and international stage for presenting cultures and initiatives that offer opportunities to learn and experience folk traditions from around the world, according to the Smithsonian Institution. Over the years, the Smithsonian reports that it has brought more than 23,000 musicians, artists, performers, craftspeople, workers, cooks, storytellers and more to the National Mall to demonstrate the skills, knowledge and aesthetics that embody the creative vitality of community-based traditions.
Hola Cultura spoke with Sabrina Lynn Motley, director of the Folklife Festival, who gave us the inside scoop on this year’s event.
The Folklife Festival returns after a 2-year absence: What can we expect from the Festival this year?
This year’s festival is a look at issues around the environment and culture, community and creativity. Both of the programs, the United Arab Emirates, as well as our program Earth Optimism, are really asking us what kind of world we want to create together. In the UAE program, we have an example of cultures that come from all over the world. It’s a complex region with very old established communities and deep roots [and] newer communities that have come to the UAE. They are creating something together.
I think it’s interesting or important to note that the UAE is only 50 years old as a modern country, and yet, it brings us this rich tradition. Some of the questions that the Folklife Festival have long been interested in is this relationship between modernity and tradition that we’ll see at the festival, particularly as it relates to how we deal with the environment and conservation. It’s going to be fascinating because it’s looking at the ancient and the future in a very meaningful way.
How do you decide which countries or topics the festival will focus on each year? How did you decide to pair the United Arab Emirates with Earth Optimism this year?
The process is very structured, and in some ways, it’s very sort of serendipitous. So, we have lots of curators, scientists and others working throughout the Smithsonian.Sometimes we look at where there’s some heat generated around a subject matter. For example, Earth Optimism, it came out of an institution-wide collaboration between scientists and anthropologists and all sorts of others. We’re working on issues of conservation, and so, we took the Smithsonian’s own work as our starting point and then, opened that lens to include people from around the world. That was how that program came about.
We’ve had many programs that looked at the Smithsonian’s work as a lens to the broader world. In some instances, people, countries, states or regions [or] the community will come to us and say, ‘We’d love to have a festival program.’ Sometimes an embassy will come. Sometimes we have a curator who’s been doing work in a certain area. There’s no one way to build the festival program, which is also both a blessing and its curse. Every time it’s different, which means you’ve got to build a different kind of program. The way that you engage the people that you bring to the Mall is often different, but it’s also very exciting.
Tell us about the Smithsonian Earth Optimism program, what is it? Is it optimism that we need to impact the communities and start acting to protect the environment?
In your question, you answered it in a way so beautifully. The Earth Optimism program came out of the Smithsonian Conservation Commons project, which was this consortium from around the Smithsonian of people who were doing work on conservation. They wanted to have a summit that spoke to the possibility of people coming together — all of these subjects, whether it’s land use or water rights, and all kinds of economic and ecological, social justice issues. They’re heavy, and they’re daunting. No one is taking away the fact that they are heavy and daunting, but we also want to be mindful that people are working day-in and out to address these issues and some with great effect. Even those that fail, if we’re smart, we’ll learn from those failures.
That they were thought of as a top program on the Mall is really to highlight some of the things that are working in conservation, the conversations that people are having from the ground up, where we need to look and see how we can harness the ingenuity and creativity of communities around these issues. Anything from the Chesapeake Bay and oysters to the protection of communities as well as animals in the same year. There’s a lot of good work being done. We need to take a moment to recognize it and then maybe replicate it in certain spaces.
What kind of activities can people expect to learn about environmental solutions?
We have our discussion spaces, [where] we’ll have conversations in an urban Earth Optimism studio, iOS studio, where some of the brightest minds — whether they’re scientists, community members, top policymakers or corporations — are coming together. They have discussions and more. It’s an opportunity for the people in the audience and people online to get into those conversations and ask questions.
We’ll have a space called people-powered science, which is our place for young people. There’ll be activities of learning and sharing that will take place there for families and for youth, partnering with things from NASA and all sorts of other great partners.
In our food waste, we will have a demonstration kitchen. There, people can learn about what to do with scraps and leftovers and be creative so that we can decrease the amount of food waste that happens in the world. And the list goes on.
We’ll have communities from Belize and from Fiji who are on the frontlines of environmental change, talking about the work they’re doing that involves their traditional practice of cloth-making, and what it means to their communities for future generations to be able to continue these ancestral practices on their ancestral lands. You’ll also be able to talk to people about what it is they hope for themselves and further their families and communities.
What do you see as the most significant barrier to getting the public involved in environmental projects?
I think that’s an interesting question because our job is less to get people to be involved in the projects and more to understand what could happen and why it’s important for them to think of certain issues. We hope that we will lead them to action because every individual is different and every community is different. But I hope that they will see through the festival program that there is this connection, that we are connected on this Earth.
It is incumbent upon each of us to take action, small and large. We’re not here to tell you what action to take, but we are here to help provide a space for this conversation and interactions to happen so people can talk to each other about what’s important to them, what action they may take or what kind of knowledge they need to to begin to even begin to think about making a change in their communities and their families. It’s about information sharing and not in a dry way — something that’s active and engaging. We hope [it] will encourage people to ask questions when they leave the festival.
You mentioned that there are some events dedicated to young people. Why do you feel it is important for young people to attend the Folklife Festival?
It’s easy to say we hope that we’re teaching them enough, but we know that often it’s older people who learn from younger people. I think that when the festival was really, sort of at its best, there’s sort of this circular learning where older people are learning from younger people and vice versa; people from different communities are learning from each other. For younger people to see, or to reinforce this idea that we are a part of an interconnected world, I think that’s why it’s so important to have young people at the festival.
As a director of this Festival, what would you recommend that people at home do to help the environment?
I think one of the things that we don’t often do — and I’m guilty of this as others — is to really take stock of what’s needed in my own community. I’m hoping that people will look around and see what’s needed, what they can do and what their interests are. It may be something as simple as starting a pollinator garden in your backyard.
If you don’t want to deal with other people, you don’t have to. You can deal with your plants and bees, and life is good. Just being honest about your own resources, your own interest in your own commitments, and using that as an anchor, then to think about how I can extend the things that matter to me to the people in my community. There are all sorts of ways to do that. It doesn’t have to be a major gesture. I think that’s the thing because it can be so overwhelming. What the curators have done is they’ve given us very intimate actions, intimate bites of things so it’s not so overwhelming.
What would you say are the can’t-miss events during the Festival?
There are too many! I would say things like our marketplace because it’s helping other communities of artisans. We’ve got extraordinary artisans. It’s not just about buying stuff. These things are sustainably made. They really support a community, and not just with money, but also with the transmission of knowledge in practice, practices that we will rely on in centuries to come.
I encourage people to meet and to gather and have a bite to eat. We’ve got wonderful food. Certainly, we have our demonstration kitchen, our food waste kitchen, which people will love. They can take away one recipe or a different spice than they’ve had in their cabinet and couldn’t figure out what to do with it and now they can use it.
Most importantly, I think just to take the time to speak with the participants who are coming from the UAE and around the world because it’s an opportunity to ask questions face-to-face. It’s not like news channels are telling you what to think, you get to really talk to people. You can break down your preconceptions, and hopefully, our participants will do likewise in this exchange.
Tell us more about the online options.
We are living in a sort of hybrid space because of COVID. Even though people are out and about, we still know that the kind of social connection that we thought was impossible in the digital space is fast and in fact possible. It takes some work. We have to be mindful and thoughtful about how we do it, but it’s possible. We are going to have many of our programs live streamed. In the past, we’ve had them recorded and streamed later. Our evening concerts are all going to be quite wonderful.Those are certainly something not to be missed. People can watch them at home, or they can join us at The Mall, bring a picnic or grab some food from the concessions and hang out. Just because you’re not able to be with us physically, it’s not a reason that you shouldn’t be able to be a part of our festival family.
– Lucía Matamoros
This story has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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