The Cultural Resources Council believes that vital expressions of cultural heritage abound in Onondaga County; that the documentation and cultivation of our cultural diversity are an act of faith in the fundamental beliefs and inherited customs of our residents; and that the preservation of family and community traditions is a means of celebrating the basic values of our society.   The primary purpose of the Cultural Resources Council’s Folk Arts Program is to support and perpetuate the living cultural heritage of traditional folk arts practiced in communities throughout Onondaga County and Central New York. The Program’s highest priority is support for traditional folk artists.   The Folk Arts Program also assists and co-sponsors programming with local community organizations that enables general audiences in Onondaga County to experience traditional arts from local communities as well as cultures throughout the world.   All of the Cultural Resources Council’s folk arts projects are developed in close consultation and collaboration with local communities and organizations. Public presentations associated with these Folk Arts projects include interpretive components designed to aid audiences in understanding and appreciating a tradition’s meaning, artistic significance, and its social, cultural and historical contexts. Documentation is retained in an archive for research and educational purposes.   Folk arts are traditional cultural expressions through which a group maintains and passes on its shared way of life.   Traditional folk arts express a group’s sense of beauty, identity, and values. These arts are usually learned informally through direct participation in performance, by example, or in oral traditions among families, friends, neighbors and co-workers rather than through formal education. Never static, folk arts change as they are adapted to new circumstances while they maintain their traditional qualities.   Traditional folk arts are practiced by ethnic, regional, occupational, and religious groups as well as other kinds of communities or networks of people sharing some common identity. They include: performing traditions in music, dance, and drama; traditional storytelling and other verbal arts; festivals; and traditional crafts, visual arts, architecture, the adornment and transformation of the built environment, and other kinds of material folk culture.   The involvement of folk artists with their traditions stems from direct participation in the everyday life and ceremonial events of their own communities. They work within the artistic conventions shaped and refined over time while creating innovations recognized by other community members.   Click here to view recent Folk Arts performances. For more information about Folk Arts please contact:   Daniel F. Ward, Program Director 315.435.8554