Join ACTA staff for a free informational meeting or a webinar to learn more about our funding for folk & traditional artists and organizations.

Meetings will be held in: Fresno (May 17), Oakland (May 17), Salinas (May 21), San Jose (May 22), San Diego (May 29), Coachella (May 30), Los Angeles (May 31), and Sacramento (June 6).  Webinars will be held in English on June 4 and in Spanish on June 5.

Text and photos by Russell Rodríguez, Apprenticehsip Program Manager

For much time, historians and researchers have found it necessary to look to expressive culture to re-imagine histories of communities that did not practice a written culture.  Communities in the Rio Grand Texas Valley have found song forms such as the corrido as informative to the on-goings within this region.  Similarly, in Puerto Rico, la plena, the Afro-boricua music style, has served as the local newspaper to communicate occurrences throughout the island.  Researchers and communities have learned to read public visual art as statements of community sentiments.  Significantly, in the African American community quilt makers have continuously contributed in documenting through their art tradition the joys and atrocities experienced throughout history. These expressions tell the hidden stories that are not documented in history books or literature, nor shared with schools and students as part of required curriculum.  ACTA is proud to have supported as part of its Apprenticeship Program in 2011, two talented representatives of this art form, master artist Patricia Montgomery and her apprentice Helen Anderson of the East Bay area.