Week 3: Community Fellows Meeting

Week three of my internship at Vermont Folklife–the time really is flying! I am continuing to chip away at the Farm Series, listening to the interviews and identifying keywords. Over the weekend, I was able to attend a meeting of those enrolled in the VT Folklife Community Fellows Program.

The meeting was held so that each of the Fellows could present their projects, which are well into the research and interviewing phase. Participants’ projects are based within their own communities, and the questions driving them are wide-ranging, from ongoing flood recovery systems to traditional handcrafts as they exist in Rochester, Vermont. The areas of interest are contained to “definable communities,” but that can mean many things, as the Fellows demonstrated quite well. One of the group participants, for example, spoke about her own community, which is that of caretakers in Vermont. Another, about the culture of “sacrifice zones” in places like Barre, where classism plays an overwhelming role in popular perceptions of people and their communities. 

Seeing the work of the Community Fellows was incredibly inspiring to me. Their projects were not only interesting, but also contained so many possibilities. Within the work of the Fellows lies opportunity for things like increased awareness and added community support systems where it really counts.