<p align="center"><strong>Tennessee State Parks Folklife Project</strong></p>

In the late 1970s, Bobby Fulcher, a naturalist with the Division of Parks and Recreation, began to document and preserve Tennessee's diverse folk culture. In 1979, the agency and its partner, the Tennessee Department of Conservation, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the collection and organization of folklife resources. Fulcher hired folklorists Elaine Lawless, Jay Orr, and Raymond Allen, to carry out this work now known as the Tennessee State Parks Folklife Project.

Each folklorist worked within one of Tennessee’s three Grand Divisions (East, Middle, and West). Two state parks in each region were identified as target areas and served as the base from which the folklorist worked. Although grant funding ended in 1984, the Folklife Project continues today.

This work included:

● Recording local musicians, craftspeople, and storytellers in communities around six state parks

● Presenting programs in the parks using those local people

● Documenting local folk art and folklore through film and audio

● Organizing annual community folk arts festivals hosted by state parks

The Tennessee State Parks Folklife Project produced more than 500 hours of audio tape, 9,600 slides, and 2,200 black and white negatives, including duplicates of historic photographs which had been collected for years by their owners. Now housed at the Library & Archives, the recordings and accompanying photographs include material on traditional quilting, burial customs, storytelling, blacksmithing, herbal medicine, fishing, logging, farming techniques, and music.

<p align="center"><strong>Visit the <a href="https://teva.contentdm.oclc.org/customizations/global/pages/collections/parksfolklife/parksfolklife.html">Tennessee Virtual Archive (TeVA)</a href> to view more photos and recordings from the Tennessee State Parks Folklife Project.</s></p>