Oklahoma Museum Educators – Incorporating Folklore Into Museum Education Workshop on June 4
Like museum educators, folklore in education practitioners often employ object-based learning. This workshop on June 4 will introduce ethnographic tools of the folklorist to deepen teaching with artifacts across disciplines and age groups. Expect a highly interactive session that includes exercises to explore the concepts of insider, outsider, context, and material culture.
Speaker Paddy Bowman, prominent American folklorists and Director of Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education, will incorporate activities from the inaugural volume of the Journal of Folklore and Education, “Dress to Express: Exploring Culture and Identity,” will address how artifacts convey and reinforce identity.
Local Learning began as the National Task Force for Folk Arts in Education during a 1993 national roundtable at the National Endowment for the Arts. Today, they are a loose network of hundreds of people interested in engaging young people with their own traditional culture and with the local culture and folklore of their families, regions, and the larger world. They are folklorists, folk artists, and educators of many stripes. They work in public agencies, nonprofit organizations, schools, universities, museums, community centers, libraries, and out-of-school education settings.
Paddy Bowman co-received the prestigious 2013 Benjamin A. Botkin Prize Awarded from the American Folklore Society (AFS). It is given to recognize lifetime achievement in public folklore. In its report, the 2013 Botkin Prize Committee praised the outstanding contributions of the recipients to the field of folklore, noting:
“Throughout her long and illustrious career, Paddy Bowman’s teaching and outreach about folk arts in education has engaged a broader public audience in meaningful ways. K-12 teachers, community scholars, and arts administrators around the nation have benefited from her ability to connect non-folklorists with our discipline. Her influential university courses and her professional development training programs in folklore for educators around the country, her implementation of model school-based projects, her authorship of seminal arts and education publications, and her development of online and off-line curricular materials have significantly extended the reach of folklore to hundreds of teachers and thousands of students throughout the United States. Bowman’s clarion call for the full inclusion of folk and traditional arts and artists in our nation’s education as well as her sage council on matters of public policy and strategic planning related to all areas of public folklore, make her a most worthy recipient of this award.”
The incorporating folklore workshop will be held at the Gilcrease Museum located at 1400 N Gilcrease Museum Road, Tulsa.
Registration is $50 for OMA members and $65 for non-members and includes lunch. The registration deadline is May 22. Register online here.
Anyone interest in teaching with artifacts should attend!
The education workshop is sponsored in part by the Oklahoma Arts Council, Kirkpatrick Family Fund, Oklahoma Folklife Council, Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center, Oklahoma City Zoological Park & Botanical Garden, Gilcrease Museum and the Oklahoma Museum Educators professional interest network.