2025 Festival Youth and the Future of Culture

Festival in Frame: Photos from Day Six

July 7, 2025 Cassie Roshu Elisa Hough Grace Bowie

A woman with black apron covered in paint faces a group of small children, smiling and holding onto a step ladder. Behind her is a mural in vibrant colors of a woman with an embroidered blouse and long dark hair in a ponytail, plus giant ears of corn and white petals of a flowers.

“Knowing that our creations will endure beyond our lifetimes
fills me with a profound sense of pride.”
—Brianna Castelli, journeyman stone carver and mason, Washington National Cathedral

Unlike the stone masons at the Cathedral, we build the Smithsonian Folklife Festival knowing it will be gone in a matter of days. Already our crews have already forklifted away tables, loaded up the lowriders, and cleared out the Foodways refrigerator.

Yet the conversations, collaborations, and connections created on the National Mall over the last week will continue to ripple into the future. If you feel inspired to take up a trade, write a song, learn to skate, or uncover a family recipe, then the Festival continues in your home, your community.

For now, we’ll revel in the memories and some favorite photos from today. Share your own on social media, using the hashtag #2025Folklife.

← Day Five

Along with the National Museum of American History, the Festival hosted a naturalization ceremony for twenty-five new young citizens, hailing from countries around the world. Cliff Murphy, director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, welcomed them as “fellow citizens who work alongside us to help to build a world where diverse cultures thrive together.”

Photo by Grace Bowie, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

A young woman in a white blouse and black cap paints on a white slab. Below the reddish Smithsonian Castle is the outline of a scroll with various hand tools inside. — In a collaboration between the New Orleans Master Crafts Guild and the American College of the Building Arts, architecture student Isabel Wood rendered the Smithsonian Castle on a plaster slab, with a scroll of tools below representing the other building trades present at the Festival.
Photo by Sonya Pencheva, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

A young man and his mother stand onstage together, with her right hand on his shoulder in a ballroom dance posture. They both wear traditional Hungarian clothing, with the woman in a bright red and green dress and headscarf, and the boy in a dark blue jac — Through the Archive Challenge, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress encourages musicians, singers, and other artists to explore its archive and get creative with what they find. Anna (Panni) De Cheke and Leó Demeter Qualls, mother and son, performed Hungarian folk dances that they learned from a 1995 video of a performance by Méta and the Tisza Dance Ensemble in the American Folklife Center’s Neptune Plaza Concert Series at the Library of Congress.
Photo by Sonya Pencheva, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

A young woman in a gray blouse and denim shorts speaks into a microphone on stage, one arm outstretched and one holding the smartphone she’s reading from. A white wearing a service vest stands at attention beside her. — “We reach out to pull back the curtain of a starry sky, to find ourselves on the other side, preparing to take the stage.” Elani Spencer, a nineteen-year-old poet from Rochester, New York, took us to the stars with her poem “Moon Milk” that she read at the closing Talent Show.
Photo by Brandon Weldon, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

A young woman is seated at a table, facing away from the camera. She leans over her work, as she carefully paints on an old vinyl record. Next to the record on the table is her smartphone, which displays the image she is recreating in paint on the record— — With a little creativity and upcycling, we can make the old new again. In the Arts + Industries Building, Emily Hsu—the 2024-2025 inaugural Edison Youth Poet Laureate—took a break from words to tell a part of her story visually by painting an old vinyl record.
Photo by Mark Roth, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

A chalkboard wall displays advice written by festival guests to their younger selves; Don't touch your eyebrows and Care a lot + be silly are two examples. — What is something you’d like to tell your younger self? The chalkboards in The Hallway, designed by former Latino Museum Studies Program intern and current tech crew member Natalia Alfonzo Mudoy, invited visitors to share opinions through prompts, divided by generation.
Photo by Cassie Roshu, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Leaning over a work table, a young woman adorned with beaded jewelry and a feather in her hair uses an electric stamping tool on the side of a maroon and turquoise sneaker. A boy behind her ruffles his hair as he watches her. — Di’Orr Greenwood—Diné artist and advocate—stamps the phrase “Tó éí ííńá át’é” (meaning “Water is life” in her mother tongue) on one side of a skating participant’s shoe, which she designed in partnership with Nike, and the same phrase in English on the other side.
Photo by Cassie Roshu, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Six people pose around a freestanding mural in the grass, with the U.S. Capitol Building in the distance. The mural includes the word SWEDA in graffiti script and a hand adorned with many gold rings. The rings each contain a word, spelling out Folk Life F — A picture-perfect end. SWEDA, an Indonesian jewelry brand, celebrated the conclusion of their time at this year’s Festival with a group flick, later encouraging other participants and staff to join in on the photo.
Photo by Cassie Roshu, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

They say it takes a village, and we are here to prove it’s true. The Festival staff grows from a handful of permanent employees in the off-season to sizeable population of seasonal staff, interns, contractors, and volunteers in the summer.

Photo by Sonya Pencheva, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Given the fleeting nature of the Festival, documentation has been central to our work since the very first gathering in 1967. Festival in Frame is an embodiment of that spirit, and it would not be possible without our amazing photographers—many of whom volunteer their time and talents to the Festival—who have spent the past six days documenting each special moment.

Thank you to lead photographer Sonya Pencheva and our volunteers and staff: Shannon Binns, Grace Bowie, Julie Byrne, James Dacey, Joshua Davis, Craig Fergus, Daniel Hajjar, Stephen L. Kolb, Anna Beth Lee, Phillip R. Lee, Robert Meyers, Richard Pierrin, Cassie Roshu, Mark S. Roth, Lauren Rubinson, Stanley Turk, Abigail Ventura, Ronald Villasante, Josh Weilepp, Brandon Weldon, and Mark C. Young.

And thanks to you—readers, visitors, viewers—for your curiosity, your willingness to engage, and your generosity of spirit. While the Festival has ended, the future of culture still lies ahead. We hope that you’ll keep up with this year’s participants, explore our recipes page for some culinary inspiration, and check out our Festival Blog for extra videos, photos, articles, and more in the coming months.

This is Team Fest in Frame signing off. We’ll see you next year!

Team Festival in Frame is media intern Cassie Roshu, social media specialist Grace Bowie, and editor and web content manager Elisa Hough.

Festival Blog

Festival in Frame: Photos from Day Six

Posts by Festival

Recent Posts

Themes