Programs

  • Culture Ambassadors Collaborative

    At the core of Folk Will Save Us is the Culture Ambassadors Collaborative, a cohort of Twin Cities based artists and culture bearers who work to build vitality and health in their respective cultural communities through folk- and tradition-based art forms. The Cohort utilizes the model of a mutual-support peer network to build each other's respective projects, mobilized by Folk Will Save Us' institutional and organizational knowledge. Thank you to the Minnesota Humanities Center and the voters of Minnesota for their support of this project. Public announcement of 2024's Cohort members and projects coming soon.

  • Folk Will Save Us Podcast

    The Folk Will Save Us podcast highlights the stories and work of standout artists using cultural traditions to innovate and inform a healthier, more integrated society. Interviews include: Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra (Lady Xøk) & Xilam Balam (Los Nativos), Ahmed Ismail Yusuf (author, The Lion’s Binding Oath), Kari Tauring (heritage Nordic staff-carrying woman), Slavka Slavtcheva (dancer and cultural organizer, Minnesota’s Bulgarian community), Daniel Kahn (award-winning Yiddish singer-songwriter). New episodes coming soon.

  • Longfellow Village Band Yiddish & Klezmer workshops

    The Longfellow Village Band is a community music and dance workshop celebrating the expressive heritage of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Founded in 2020 to offer a secular, inclusive space to learn Klezmer music in Minnesota, workshops offer a space to embrace, learn, and preserve Yiddish culture and build solidarity across historically marginalized cultures. Led by a cohort of teaching artists, the name "Village Band" harkens to old times in Eastern Europe in which working musicians provided a soundtrack and grounding for a community's yearlong cycle of life and public ritual.

  • Culturally Rooted Artist Support

    Folk Will Save Us provides grant writing support, strategic consulting, and training opportunities so that culturally rooted artists can thrive. These artists and culture bearers play a critical role in creating spaces where communities make sense of the world on their own terms and address issues at the core of individual and community health, and Folk Will Save Us works to amplify and support these artists in their work within their own cultural communities.

  • Culture Incubator Fellows

    Launching in 2025, the Culture Incubator Fellowship will provide a yearlong community of practice for culture bearers and artists around the state of Minnesota. Fellows will be selected through a public RFP and reviewed by a panel of Minnesota cultural leaders. Stay tuned for more information, and sign up for Folk Will Save Us' mailing list to get real-time updates.

  • Di Bayke Klezmer Band

    Di Bayke Klezmer Band is the performance arm of the Longfellow Village Band. Its purpose is to offer community-based performance opportunities to the participants of the Longfellow Village band klezmer workshops. Di Bayke (meaning "Tall tale" in Yiddish) plays the dance music of Yiddish and Eastern European music traditions, and is made up of artists who have trained through the Longfellow Village Band workshops. Di Bayke brings experiences in Yiddish and Klezmer music to new audiences around the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota. Contact us regarding booking a live performance or a workshop!

activities made possible through grants and/or programmatic support from the following:

  • Minnesota State Arts Board

  • Metropolitan Regional Arts Council

  • Minnesota Humanities Center

  • National Endowment for the Arts

  • Arts Midwest

  • Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund

  • Gandhi Mahal & Curry in a Hurry

  • The Red Sea Restaurant Minneapolis

  • Modus Locus