Did you hear the news?

81st National Folk Festival in Salisbury for 2022!

In a surprise announcement during the kickoff of the 80th National Folk Festival, the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA) and the City of Salisbury announced plans for the National Folk Festival to continue its tenure in Salisbury, Maryland, for another year. The nationally celebrated event, which travels from city to city across the country, will be presented on August 26-28, 2022, in Downtown Salisbury, Maryland.

This will be the fourth year the National Folk Festival is presented in Salisbury, an extension of the partnership that brought the 78th, 79th and 80th National Folk Festivals to this community. It also marks a date change for a festival that has taken place the weekend after Labor Day since 2018.

City leadership and the NCTA enthusiastically agreed that the opportunity to carry forward the momentum and excitement of this partnership would continue to bring lasting benefits and value to Salisbury. The city has enjoyed the National Folk Festival’s ability to be a catalyst for the newly completed renovations in its downtown as well as wide-ranging community engagement. The National Folk Festival has been a major driver of the recent physical, social, and cultural renewal of the city.

The NCTA, which has produced the National Folk Festival in 26 communities over 80 years, recognized the potential and value of keeping the festival in Salisbury for an additional year. The National Folk Festival is the nation’s longest-running multicultural celebration of the traditional arts. It seeks collaborative partnerships with communities aspiring to build on this legacy. The search for the 2023 host city, a nationally competitive process, has begun; interested communities can learn more about hosting the National Folk Festival here.

This weekend, September 10-12, the 80th National Folk Festival is being presented with modifications and new safety protocols due to the pandemic. The 81st National Folk Festival in 2022 will re-establish areas of the festival that were limited for 2021, including a crafts marketplace, in-person school shows, and other key features that were scaled back due to the pandemic.

The opportunity to present the 81st National Folk Festival in 2022, on the 4th weekend in August, will enable the City of Salisbury to leverage this economic and cultural catalyst for an additional year of recovery and rebuilding after the upheaval of the pandemic. The new weekend aligns with the end of summer travel and creates an opportunity for the city to have a destination event for its tourism and business communities during this peak season.

In spring 2022, organizers will begin publicizing 81st National Folk Festival performers and other details of the event with press announcements and updates to NationalFolkFestival.com.

To stay current, be sure to follow the National Folk Festival on Facebook (facebook.com/NFFMaryland), Twitter (twitter.com/NFFMaryland), and Instagram (Instagram.com/nffmaryland).

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About the National Folk Festival
Since it was first presented in St. Louis in 1934, the National Folk Festival, the National Council for the Traditional Arts’ (NCTA) flagship event, has celebrated the roots, richness and variety of American culture. Championed in its early years by Eleanor Roosevelt, it was the first event of national stature to present the arts of many nations, races, and languages on equal footing. It was also the first to present to the public musical forms such as the blues, Cajun music, a polka band, Tex-Mex conjunto, Peking Opera, and many others. Today, the National is an exuberant traveling festival, produced by the NCTA in partnership with communities around the country that embraces the diverse cultural expressions that define us as a people in the 21st century. https://www.nationalfolkfestival.com/

About the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA)
A leading non-profit in the field, the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA) is dedicated to the presentation and documentation of folk and traditional arts in the U.S. Stressing excellence and authenticity, the NCTA presents the nation’s finest traditional artists in major festivals, tours, concerts, workshops, demonstrations, exhibitions, media productions, school programs, cross-cultural exchanges and other activities. It works in partnership with American communities to establish new, sustainable traditional arts events that deliver lasting social, cultural and economic benefits. Over 7,000+ hours of the NCTA’s archival audio recordings dating from the 1930s are permanently housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The NCTA champions the interests of folk and traditional artists and organizations in the arena of public policy. https://ncta-usa.org

About the City of Salisbury, Maryland
Founded in 1732, Salisbury is the county seat of Wicomico County, a place where John Smith touched land in 1608 during his exploration of the Chesapeake Bay. Situated on Maryland’s historic Eastern Shore at the crossroads of the Delmarva Peninsula, Salisbury is now one of the region’s largest cities, and serves as the capital of the Eastern Shore, a rural area defined by its agricultural and maritime traditions, landscapes and industries. The Chesapeake Bay is central to this distinctive identity. Though a relatively small city, Salisbury is the geographic and economic hub of one of the nation’s fastest-growing Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Led by a dynamic mayor, the City of Salisbury is working to build its reputation as an arts and culture destination, and is aligning its downtown development and revitalization efforts with the arts. Salisbury believes hosting the National Folk Festival is the perfect catalyst to further a cultural renaissance and urban renewal. http://www.salisbury.md