Building the boat as we float it: A new era for the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival
Digital Spanish-language programs among the offerings that take the Festival far beyond the Mall.
As the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage rethinks how to deliver content in the pandemic age, the Web—rather than stages on the Mall—is the medium by which performers reach audiences, at least for the foreseeable future.
While the Center’s signature Folklife Festival has long offered online content (“Beyond the Mall” is its latest iteration), the cancellation of the 2020 in-person event prompted staff to consider additional ways to deepen technology’s role to connect us across time zones and geographies, or as Festival director Sabrina Lynn Motley puts it, to build “layered portals of engagement.”
“We felt it was important for us to do the Festival’s work even though we weren’t going to be on the Mall,” Motley says, noting that planning continues apace for programs through 2025.
In the wake of the cancellation of all in-person events, she and the rest of the Festival team grappled with complex questions: how much of the event should be replicated online? How might the spirit of the Festival be captured online? What are the implications of reaching (theoretically) unlimited global audiences?
Reached by phone earlier this month, Motley said she was feeling “positive about how we’ve shifted to the digital space,” and cited some unexpected benefits. Consider the role of English-language translators at the live Festival: vital as these services are, the translation process tends to “break the energy” of a conversation between audience members and speakers, Motley says.
Encuentro en al Smithsonian
Eugenia León (left) and Marisoul are the featured performers on Encuentro en el Smithsonian, October 29, 2020 at noon. (Photo courtesy Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage)
Recently launched Spanish-language online programming offered by the Festival, Encuentro en al Smithsonian, is helping overcome that limitation. “There is a desire to hear from artists in their own languages, their mother tongues,” she says, something the Web facilitates. Each program is pre-recorded so that English subtitles can be inserted. During their “premiere” a range of accessibility services, including real-time captioning, is provided.
The online conversations between featured artists as well as among viewers in the chat section “have been deep and beautiful” Motley says. At noon Eastern on October 29, Eugenia León (the internationally renowned singer dubbed “the voice of Mexico”) and La Marisoul, the Los Angeles native who fronts the Grammy award winning Latin folk band La Santa Cecilia, will be in conversation about their calling as artists, music’s vital role in transcending borders, and their hopes for younger generations of women singers.
The first Encuentro participants, some of whom have appeared on the Mall at past Festivals, have been musicians (visit the Archived Events page to learn more). Motley says future programs will explore other arts and disciplines. All of the online programming is very much a work in progress.
“One of the exciting and terrifying realities of this time is that we’re building the boat as we float it,” she explains.
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Posted: 1 October 2020
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