GLOW Traditions supports our area’s traditional arts and folklife through public programs, documentation and advocacy. We are a shared program among the Arts Council for Wyoming County (ACWC), the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts (GVCA), and the Genesee-Orleans Regional Arts Council (GO ART!).
Traditional arts and folklife connect people, and celebrate how local communities practice and pass on their shared way of life. They are usually learned informally, through watching and doing rather than learning from a book or in school. Traditional arts can be passed down over generations, expressing a community’s sense of beauty, identity and values. Folk arts and folkways range from verbal “lore” like local ghost stories, children’s rhymes or family sayings, to material arts like woodcarving, quilting or fly tying, to performance arts like fiddling, break dancing, or square dance calling. Your family, your church, your social club – these and many others are groups that practice and maintain creative traditions that give meaning to everyday life.
Documentation, or fieldwork, allows the GLOW Traditions to identify artists and communities who might otherwise go unrecognized for their artistic traditions. We record stories and art forms that make up our living cultural heritage. This is the first step in the process of creating public programs and forming pathways for advocacy. Through interviews, oral histories, photography and video, we continually add to a growing archive of traditional arts and folklife practiced in our region. Do you have a story to tell or an art form to share? We’d love to talk with you.
Public Programs take many forms, showcasing our region’s vibrant and diverse traditional arts. Through concerts, festivals, workshops, demos, school programs, exhibits, and online resources, GLOW Traditions helps to bring greater awareness of arts and traditions of individual communities into the public sphere. Events offer the opportunity to learn about and participate in community folklife–we look forward to seeing you!
Karen Canning is an ethnomusicologist, folklorist and educator. As GLOW Traditions Director, she frequently collaborates with community, educational, business and civic entities to document and present diverse folk arts of our region such as Hispanic holiday traditions, American folk music, world dance traditions, Native American arts, and occupational folklore. Canning collaborates with Local Learning to lead workshops for traditional artists and teachers and develop residencies in NYS schools, and participates in statewide initiatives to support New York’s traditional cultures. She holds a Masters degree in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University, with a specialty in indigenous Mexican popular music. Canning is also a cellist, strings instructor and a member of Panloco Steel Band.
