Past Projects

Operation Homecoming

Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience was a historic partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Southern Arts Federation to provide literary programming for military personnel returning from the Persian Gulf and their families.

Emergency Relief Fund

SAF was compelled to establish the Emergency Relief Fund in early September 2005 following the unprecedented destruction sustained during the hurricane season. The Fund assisted artists and arts organizations along the Gulf Coast who were seeking to rebuild their homes, work spaces and communities in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. All donations were dispursed between the state arts agencies of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, who then distribute assistance to individual artists and organizations in need. SAF developed the Emergency Relief Web site to act as a clearing house of information. If you have any questions about the Emergency Relief Fund, please contact us.
  

American Traditions

This six-year (1997-2002), innovative project provided professional development training to traditional artists to assist them to become more competitive in the professional performing arts arena and to link them to rural and underserved arts presenters in the South and across the country.  AT was designed to develop a national network for the traditional arts by providing a series of technical assistance workshops to both artists and presenters, as well as offering fee support to participating presenters who booked traditional artists in the program.  SAF worked in collaboration with four sister regional arts organizations (New England Foundation for the Arts, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Arts Midwest, and Mid America Arts Alliance) to develop this traditional arts infrastructure. SAF also collaborated with the Distance Learning Lab at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to produce two, three-hour CD ROM presentations of American Traditions workshops.  Workshop topics addressed "Traditional Arts Residencies" and "Working with Managers & Agents/Marketing Yourself as an Artist." American Traditions was generously funded through a National Endowment for the Arts and participating partners. American Traditions was an expansion of other professional development training opportunities for traditional artists and presenters: UPTAP, TATAP and Southern Connections.  

JazzSouth Radio

JazzSouth Radio is an unprecedented quarterly radio program which provided exposure of master and emerging Southern jazz artists to national and international audiences. JazzSouth focused on jazz music uncompromised by commercial concessions. Its featured artists, selected through a "blind" juried process, recorded independently, or on small to mid-sized labels.  The program offered these musicians an alternative means to widespread airplay and public exposure more typically enjoyed by major-label artists.

JazzSouth Radio was distributed free of charge on compact disc to 54 broadcast stations in the United States and 17 carriers in Australia, Brazil, Columbia, Poland, Peru, Taiwan and South Africa. It was heard on more than 240 stations in the U.S. and abroad generating more than 124,000,000 annual audience impressions. Hosted by veteran announcer Fred Story, and recorded at Fred Story Productions in Charlotte, North Carolina, each 60-minute program featured three 20-minute artist profiles.  Its compact disc format offered stations the option of broadcasting the individual segments as self-contained monthly features. Nineteen of these radio affiliates also broadcast JazzSouth on the Internet, as did one Internet-only affiliate. JazzSouth received funding support from The Coca-Cola Foundation and SAF's nine partner state arts agencies.  JazzSouth Radio aired from 1991 to 2003 producing 43 compact disks.

USDA Forest Service Research

As a part of the USDA Forest Service and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) New Century of Service presentation at the 2005 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the Southern Arts Federation (SAF) was selected as a partner to assist with the identification and documentation of traditional bearers within Forest Service communities. SAF contracted folklife consultant Carrie N. Kline to serve as the researcher for Region 8 during Spring 2004. Her research was designed to complement the ongoing work of Forest Service staff throughout Region 8. Kline's work was concentrated in Kentucky, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.  Working with USDA Forest Service staff Linda Feldman (New Century of Service Coordinator, Washington, DC), Alan Pigg (Region 8, Atlanta, Georgia), FS public affairs staff members, and representatives from the NEA, Smithsonian Folklife Program and SAF, a list of contacts and project work plan was developed. Kline made fieldtrips to Florida and South Carolina to conduct interviews.  She developed a list of 120 potential centennial participants including active and retired Forest Service personnel as well as community members in Forest Service areas.  These individuals represented a variety of traditional art forms such as split oak and pine needle basketmaking, storytelling, woodcarving, saddle making, and Tupelo honey production.