-
Festival 101At the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, you will find many exemplary practitioners of diverse, authentic, living traditions—both old and new. The goal of the Festival is to strengthen and preserve these traditions by presenting them on the National Mall. Tradition-bearers and the public can connect with and learn from one another and, in a respectful way, begin to understand cultural differences and similarities.
It Takes a Village
Each summer, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival appears and disappears from the National Mall. It takes a crew of coordinators, builders, interns, and volunteers to transform a plot of grass into a miniature city. In this short video series, produced in 2025, we highlight the hands behind the scenes who make the Festival sustainable, accessible, and welcoming to its participants and thousands of visitors from around the world.
-
From the Ground Up -
Learning by Doing -
Leave No Trace -
All Hands In -
Building an Accessible Festival
-
Smithsonian Folklife Festival Introduction (o mira en español) -
What is the Festival? -
History of the Festival
-
What the Festival teaches us? -
How you as the visitor help create the Festival experience? -
How to ask the meaningful question that always gets good answers?
Featured Videos
-
Crossing -
One Village
