The National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA) The NCTA is the nation’s oldest multicultural arts presenting organization. For over eight decades, through festivals, tours, symposia, exhibits, and media productions, the NCTA has showcased the very best of the myriad grassroots folk, tribal and ethnic cultures that comprise our diverse nation.
Dear Friends,
It has been a year of looking forward to new opportunities and challenges at the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA). In May, we announced that the National Folk Festival will travel to Jackson, Mississippi, from 2025-27. For the first time, the nation’s premier celebration of the artistic traditions of all Americans will take place in the Deep South. Mississippi is renowned for its contributions to our nation’s music, arts, and culture, and we see special potential in Jackson. We recently held a tremendously successful National Folk Festival Kickoff and launched a new festival website at NationalFolkFestival.com. The NCTA heads into 2025 excited for the work ahead!
We need your help to make this promise a reality. Please consider making a year-end, tax-deductible gift to support the next chapter of the NCTA’s storied history. It’s easy to contribute by clicking the link below.
Why give to the NCTA? As our nation struggles with rancor and division, the NCTA offers a unique vision for building community through dynamic live events that build bridges between artists and audiences and create cultural understanding through artistic excellence and civic engagement. Your contribution will support the National Folk Festival and other longstanding NCTA programs; each experienced a banner year in 2024. Over half a million people attended our festivals across the country, from the 17th Montana Folk Festival to the 37th Lowell Folk Festival and the 20th anniversary of the Richmond Folk Festival, which celebrated the special occasion with the documentary The Sounds of Culture produced by Virginia Public Media.
This fall, the NCTA once again produced the honorific events for the 2024 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellows, our nation’s highest honor for folk and traditional artists. We also partnered with National Parks nationwide on programs that created meaningful cross-cultural exchange as well as others that honored leading figures in the struggle for equal rights. The NCTA was proud to revisit two relationships from the past with the Music from the Crooked Road 20th-anniversary concert at The Barns at Wolf Trap.
Each program was preserved in the NCTA’s ever-expanding archive, one of the world’s premier collections of culturally significant and rare music. Your contribution will also support this documentation and preservation work.
We invite you to invest in supporting our efforts to cultivate mutual respect, opportunities to be our best selves, and feelings of wonder and joy. With wishes for a happy and peaceful holiday season and New Year, and deep appreciation for your support.
Warmly,
Blaine Waide
Executive Director
National Council for the Traditional Arts
George Holt
Chair, Board of Directors
National Council for the Traditional Arts
PS: To inquire about planned giving, estate planning, or making a gift to the NCTA’s Trust for Tradition Endowment Fund, please contact us at 301-565-0654 x15, or email giving@ncta-usa.org.
