Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission,

Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program

Olympia, Washington

Mission

The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSP&RC) acquires, operates, enhances and protects a diverse system of recreational, cultural, historical and natural sites. The Commission fosters outdoor recreation and education statewide to provide enjoyment and enrichment f or all and a valued legacy to future generations. The Folk & Traditional Arts in the Parks Program is a collaborative project of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission and the Washington State Arts Commission, presenting public events in state parks that reflect Washington’s cultural diversity, such as concerts, festivals, storytelling sessions, dance performances, and craft demonstrations.

Folk & Traditional Arts in the Parks Program

A collaborative project of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission and the Washington State Arts Commission, presenting public events in state parks that reflect Washington's cultural diversity, such as concerts, festivals, storytelling sessions, dance performances, and craft demonstrations.

Community Context

Washington is a diverse state with many new immigrant, old immigrant, and indigenous peoples living within its borders. Old immigrants included Chinese, Croatians, Dutch, Filipinos, Finns, Germans, Greeks, Irish, Japanese, Norwegians, and Swedes. The post-World War II period saw more Chinese, Croatians, Dutch, and Filipinos, as well as many Koreans. Washington also has many new immigrant communities. Most numerous of our new immigrants are Latinas/os, primarily from Mexico, but with others from Central America, especially El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Other new immigrant communities well represented in Washington include Vietnamese, Cambodians, Cham (Southeast Asian Muslims), Hmong, Lao, Koreans, Russians, Ukrainians, Asian Indians, Eritreans, Kenyans, Ethiopians, Afghans, Iranians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Bosnians, Pakistanis, Somalis, and a new immigrant community of Chinese. Some of our new immigrants arrived as refugees, many did not.

Until very recently in its ninety-plus-year history, Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSP&RC) has largely been a mainstream-culture agency and visitors to Washington state parks have mostly been English-speaking European-American families. At the same time that our population has been growing more diverse, park use and general outdoor recreation has been declining. Apart from issues of simple fairness and social justice, state parks everywhere, as well as federal recreational facilities, must attract a more diverse visitor base and greater diversity among its employees.

As the agency approaches its Centennial year (2013) it has published a list of Centennial Goals that address this situation. These include welcoming a more diverse population into state parks, establishing partnerships with community organizations, and the development of community events supported by the public. The Folk &Traditional Arts in the Parks Program was established to meet these three goals, and to inform park visitors of all backgrounds about the culture and history of the peoples of the state of Washington.

Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program

The Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program (FTAPP) is a Partnership Program of the WSP&RC and the Washington State Arts Commission (WSAC). A chance meeting between the executive directors of the two state agencies back in 2003 led to the eventual establishment of this successful program. The project was developed initially by the staffs of the agencies, with substantial input from Dr. Willie Smyth, Program Manager of WSAC’s Folk Arts Program, and Jim French, at that time WSP&RC’s Chief of Policy Planning. Initial funding came from a Folk Arts Infrastructure Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which continued at a diminishing rate for three years, eventually superseded entirely by WSP&RC and WSAC funds. In June 2004, folklorist Jens Lund was hired on contract as the F&TAPP’s Program Manager. Since the spring of 2005, the National Endowment for the Arts, WSAC, the Washington State Parks Foundation, the Florence Wasmer Fund for Arts and Culture of the Inland Northwest Community Foundation, and WSP&RC’s own funds have supported this programming. Since its first event in December 2004, the program has entertained and informed over 10,000 state park visitors.

Beginning with a concert in December 2004 and followed by a series of festivals, concerts, and arts demonstrations in spring and summer 2005, the F&TAPP has directly produced forty-six events, including concerts, festivals, storytelling sessions, dance performances, and craft demonstrations. We have also provided content input and funding to fifteen other events. F&TAPP events have occurred in twenty-four Washington state parks. The first events, a twenty-four-part series entitled Arts and Trails, were co-produced in cooperation with Northwest Folklife, in conjunction with the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, in parks along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. Production help for the Arts and Trails series came from Northwest Folklife.

Among the newcomer arts events we have produced or to which we have contributed are a Russian and Ukrainian festival; twelve Latino Folk Arts Fiestas of Mexican and Central American music, art and food; an Arab-American Culture Day; performances of Beijing rod puppet theater; a concert of norteño music integrated with a reminiscence of the life of a 1950s–60s Mexican-American farmworker family; and a Mexican-American singer of cowboy songs as part of day of cowboy song and poetry. Apart from those events, F&TAPP produced events and concerts featuring the culture of Native Americans, African Americans (including Gospel and Hip Hop), old-time fiddlers, ranch people, timber community people, and people in the maritime trades. All occurred in Washington state park venues as newcomer arts components of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSP&RC) and Washington State Arts Commission’s (WSAC) Partnership Program titled the Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program (F&TAPP).

Among the people involved in these events have been people from community organizations, performers and crafts demonstrators, park rangers, WSP&RC headquarters staff, visitors already in parks as campers or travelers, and people of surrounding communities attracted to the parks by publicity for the events. Among the community organizations involved were the Arab Center of Washington; the United Indians of All Tribes; the Samish, Skokomish, and Swinomish Tribes; the Think Big Foundation; the National Youth Congress; the Tri-Cities Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; the Hispanic Business Professional Association of Spokane; the Am-Ru (American-Russian) International Association; the Block Teamsters Union; the Fiestas Mexicanas Committee of Wenatchee; Amigas Unidas de Yakima; Barrios Unidos of the Yakama Catholic Diocese; DOPE Emporium of Seattle; the Friends of the Columbia River Gateway; ARC (“A Rainbow of Cultures”) of Oroville High School; Omega Psi Phi; the Washington Old Time Fiddlers Association; the Lake Chelan Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center; the Blaine Visitor Center and Chamber of Commerce; and the Wapato Indian Club of Wapato Middle School on the Yakama Indian Reservation.

Challenges

The first challenge was the establishment of an entirely new program within the bureaucracy of a nearly-100-year-old state agency that has focused almost entirely on its outdoor recreation infrastructure of 120 parks and such activities as site maintenance, fee collection, law enforcement, and natural history interpretation. The importance, from the start, of developing a sustainable program, meant establishing ties with such community organizations as those listed above.

Inspiring the park managers and rangers to work with us in the production of the events has also been a challenge, although in some cases, the rangers were more than eager to participate, and in a few, had even begun to develop community-based programming on their own. In the spring of 2007, in cooperation with Northwest Folklife, we offered a two-day workshop for rangers and interpretive staffs on how to initiate, develop, and host a cultural program in a state park. Seventeen rangers, two park interpretive specialists, and six agency administrative staffers participated in the workshop.

One of the greatest challenges has been operating performance programming from a state agency, given that performers, artists, sound engineers, and stage and other rentals are customarily paid on the day of the event. By developing a partnership with the nonprofit organization Northwest Heritage Resources, we have, since 2005, been able to use them as our fiscal agent in order to pay at the close of each event. Another challenge, not yet entirely solved, has been meeting the state’s requirements for insurance, risk, responsibility, and permit fees, when outside organizations organize events in parks. Because we recruit those organizations to help us with the events, it is not appropriate for us to ask them to assume those risks and costs despite the fact that the Washington Administrative Code requires them to do so. WSP&RC is divided administratively into four geographic regions and each of these region offices has had to develop its own policy for how to creatively meet those requirements without unduly burdening the organizations we have recruited and whose assistance we require in order to realize our programming.

Yet another challenge has been publicizing the events in channels to reach communities who are not likely to connect with local English-language media or look for park events on the Web. Establishing reliable networks within the communities, advertising in the ethnic press, through churches or social service agencies that serve these communities, and determining appropriate places to post flyers as well as finding people willing and able to post them, are a few of the ways we have done this, and not always with complete success. A great asset in this effort has been the availability on contract, of Laura Fine, a bilingual (English and Spanish) free-lance arts administrator and events organizer who lives east of the Cascade Range.

Outcomes

We have, however, had our successes, some partial, a few spectacular. Some of our local Latino Fiestas have welcomed hundreds of new visitors to state parks. The fiestas have also given talented but little-known ensembles such as Mariachi Estrella del Norte, Los Campesinos de Michoacán, and Los Bailadores del Sol exposure outside of their immediate geographic areas. Though much of Washington’s large Latina/o community (over 12% of the state’s total population) is concentrated in the central part of the state, just east of the Cascade Range, there are also communities elsewhere who are not necessarily plugged into the well-established central Washington Latina/o cultural scene. The fiestas have also given some of Washington’s many local children’s folklórico dance troupes more opportunity to showcase their work in nearby and more distant communities. National Heritage Fellow and azahares -maker Eva Castellanoz has been able to share her unique art form with Latina/o people all over Washington. The relatively new Latina/o immigrant community along the Canadian border in northern Okanogan County got its first local Cinco de Mayo fiesta, complete with the first local Reina del Cinco de Mayo , at Osoyoos Lake State Veterans Memorial Park, in Oroville, in 2005.

The Oroville High School “A Rainbow of Cultures” club was the community organization with whom we and the park staff worked and who made this new event possible. It was repeated in 2006 and will be presented again in 2008. In 2006 and 2007 northwestern Washington Latina/o communities in Skagit and Snohomish Counties were treated to music and other arts from east of the Cascade Range at fiestas in Bay View and Wenberg State Parks.

The richness and variety of Latina/o culture was also presented to non-Latina/o park visitors. Although many of the events attracted majority (probably about 80%) Latina/o audiences, the two at Pearrygin Lake State Park in the Methow Valley attracted close to 50/50 Anglas/os and Latinas/os. The Methow is home to many “urban expats,” particularly affluent professional people, and also attracts a substantial summer visitor population, includ ing many from outside the U.S. Also, the upper valley in which the park is located has a smaller local Latina/o population than the other areas in which we have had fiestas, so the Latina/o people who came to those fiestas are now familiar with that park, which is very scenic and has aquatic recreation facilities. Some of the Latina/o families who drove up the valley to the event now also use the park for recreation.

Washington Latina/o culture was also presented to largely Anglo audiences with Juan Manuel Barco and his TexMex Band’s performances at Deception Pass and Larrabee State Parks as part of our American Roots Music Series. Mexican-American cowboy singer Bodie Dominguez performed as part of a Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival in Sacajawea State Park in 2005. Deception Pass and Fort Columbia State Parks presented Chinese culture to non-Chinese audiences with performances of the National Heritage Fellowship-winning Dragon Art Studio’s Beijing Rod Puppets.

Another outcome has been our establishment of a relationship with the substantial (30,000+!) community of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants in the greater Portland/Vancouver area. With the help of Utah State University folklore graduate student and Fulbright Scholar Katya Pahshkovska we were able to develop a working relationship with that region’s Am-Ru International Association with whom we mounted an afternoon-long Russkii Festival at Paradise Point State Park. This park, underutilized by that community, can now serve as a gathering place for Russians and Ukrainians who were often so numerous on summer weekends at nearby Battle Ground State Park that the parking areas were full by noon.

Our collaboration and with the Seattle-area Arab Center of Washington on Arab-American Culture Day offered the opportunity to celebrate this diverse population and to present their cultural expressions to the general public. Reflecting the shared goals of our two organizations, this type of programming is particularly important at this time in our history.

The Future

In the future, we hope to build on our relationships with the diverse communities with whom we have been working, which also include four Washington Indian tribes, Seattle’s Hip Hop arts scene, and other non-new immigrant communities. Of special importance is the good will and cooperation they and we have been able to foster together through our work with the community organizations and the individuals who represent those organizations. Given our agency’s long-term commitment to this program, we expect to continue this work.

Although state parks as venues for cultural events is not a new concept, the use of cultural events to attract new demographics to parks is. Many city and county parks around the U.S. host cultural events for many different kinds of communities but state parks are new to this model. In the past state park patronage has been largely white, Anglo, and mainstream. As park patronage declines, due to many factors, and as the general population becomes more diverse, this kind of program can benefit a range of parties, including new immigrant communities and community organizations, artists, arts agencies and organizations, parks agencies and their staffs, and the general public. Such a program should be replicable in any state where the parks and art s agencies are willing to commit the necessary resources and community outreach and to work with community members and park staff to create and sustain diverse cultural events.

Learn more

Please go to Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission’s Web site www.parks.wa.gov , and click Events at State Parks and News Releases .

Contact

Jens Lund, Program Manager of Folk & Traditional Arts in the Parks Program

Jens.Lund(at)parks.wa.gov

Washington State Parks & Recreation Commission

PO Box 42650

Olympia WA 98504-2650

360.902.8526

Photos, top to bottom

Members of the audience dabke dancing at Arab-American Culture Day, Lake Sammamish State Park, 2006. Photo, Jens Lund, courtesy of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program.

Dragon Art Studio’s Beijing rod puppet theater, including National Heritage Fellows Yuqin Wang & Zhengli Xu, also their daughter, Brenda Xu. Left to right: Brenda Xu & Zhengli Xu, Performance at Cornet Bay Retreat Center, Deception Pass State Park, Whidbey Island, 2006. Photo, Jens Lund, courtesy of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program.

Los Guadalupanas: TriCities Los Guadalupanas food booth. Photo, Laura Fine, courtesy of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program.

Alexander Shimko (as Petryushka, a traditional Russian clown or trickster character) leads audience kids in a tug-of-war at the Russkii Festival, Paradise Point State Park, La Center, 2007. Photo, Jens Lund, courtesy of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program.

Public dancing to Trino y sur Mariachi Diamante Latino Folk Arts Fiesta, Sacajawea State Park, Pasco, 2007. Photo, Jens Lund, courtesy of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program.

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