The 2012 Folklife Festival opens June 27 on the National Mall! The official start of the Festival—the opening ceremony—begins at 10:30 a.m.

“The exciting thing is that we have three programs that focus on community engagement in the United States,” Stephen observed.

Dan Sheehy, director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, talks about the special Latino music concert series featured at this year’s Festival.  

Campus and Community curator Betty Belanus and coordinator Cristina Díaz-Carrera introduce the ins and outs of the program.

Curator Portia James and artist Jay Coleman describe the 2012 Festival program Citified: Arts and Creativity East of the Anacostia River.

Staff of The NAMES Project introduce us to Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding The AIDS Memorial Quilt, a program of the 2012 Festival.

I am excited to see that Dinosaurs under Montana’s Big Sky will be featured at the Festival.

Christylez Bacon, a native of Washington D.C., is a musician on a mission; his mission being the promotion of cultural unification and acceptance.

When joining the Folklife festival team, I was given brief profiles of all the participants that were a part of the Citified program.

UNUKUPUKUPU, which means “Shrine of Ferns [Rooted in Fresh Lava]," is an earth-centric hula group from Hawai`i Community College that aims to bring an awareness of the role and the spirit of hula as a sacred dance into a modern global context.