The Virginia Folklife Program invites you to the Carysbrook Performing Arts Center in Fork Union (Carysbrook) for its third screening of In Good Keeping in 2022. This original, feature-length documentary film showcases eighteen artists from across the state who are working to sustain the cultural traditions of Virginia.
Based at Virginia Humanities, the Virginia Folklife Program is the state center for the documentation, presentation, support, and celebration of Virginia’s rich cultural heritage. Whether sung or told, hand-crafted or performed, Virginia’s rich folklife refers to those “arts of everyday life” that reflect a sense of traditional knowledge and connection to community. Since 2002, Virginia Folklife’s Apprenticeship Program has served over 150 two-or-more person teams of mentor artists and their apprentices, granting funding and support to encourage the continuation of living traditions.
In Good Keeping introduces audiences to the most recent cohort of mentor artists and their apprentices. This screening will feature and honor participating mentor artist Horace Scruggs, who led an apprenticeship team that included his daughter, genealogist Hannah Scruggs, and historian Niya Bates. Together, this team worked to reclaim their relationship to the James River, and in so doing, honor their ancestors, freed and enslaved, who once navigated central Virginia waterways with expertise. Following the film, stay to hear a discussion with Scruggs, Bates, filmmaker Pat Jarrett (digital media specialist, Virginia Folklife Program), and Justin Reid (director, community initiatives, Virginia Humanities).
Before the screening, enjoy a reception featuring refreshments and light bites by Luz Lopez, who participated in our apprenticeship program in 2019 to train her daughter in traditional foodways of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula This event is co-presented by our hosts, the Carysbrook Performing Arts Center.
Free and open to all; registration is required.
Reception begins at 5:30pm, film screening will begin at 6pm (with a roughly 75-minute run time). Artist and filmmaker discussion will directly follow the film.
Watch the Trailer
VIRGINIA FOLKLIFE APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM
The Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program has supported artists who are masters in traditions ranging from instrument repair in southwest Virginia to Mongolian mask-making in Northern Virginia to growing and grinding heirloom cornmeal on the Eastern Shore. By awarding teacher-student teams financial support and providing a platform to share their work, the Virginia Folklife Program works to sustain the community traditions that entertain, nourish, inspire, and define Virginians. The Virginia Folklife Program, based at Virginia Humanities, is the state center for the documentation, presentation, support, and celebration of Virginia’s rich cultural heritage. The Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program receives funding support from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts Folk Arts Program.
