Listening to You

We love creating and putting on the festival for you every year. And while we get a lot out of what we do, your experience matters to us. Every 2 to 3 years, with the help of our volunteers, we conduct a live audience survey, gathering feedback from festival-goers about what works and what could work better in the festival.

Here is a summary of what our 2023 survey found

We take your comments very seriously! In 2023 in response to how we could improve the festival, wrote: “Think deeper.” So … we did! Deeper thinking has helped us make the following changes for the 2024 festival:

  • We’re saturating the grounds with more information about “folklife” itself and why it matters.
  • We’ve reconfigured the festival layout to make waiting in line for food more efficient and attending cultural performances and conversations more confortable.
  • We’ve created more shaded dining areas.
  • We’re expanding our accessibility offerings.
  • On performance stages, we’re curating more workshops to involve audiences and more encounters to bring together artists from distinct cultures whose music or dance traditions share common expressions.

click on a slide to see the survey report

Announcing our Guest Folklorist for 2024

Each year, we invite a folklorist from elsewhere to experience and evaluate the festival. These evaluations look critically and contextually at our work and offer feedback to help us celebrate our successes and make changes where we can. The 2024 TMY Guest Folklorist is Teresa Hollingsworth, from Covington, Georgia.

Teresa Holligsworth smiling.

Teresa Hollingsworth is the former Director of Traditional Arts at South Arts (Atlanta, GA), she recently joined the staff of Oxford College of Emory University (Oxford, GA) as Grants Manager. Highlights of her public sector work include developing and directing the first two phases of the In These Mountains, Central Appalachian Folk Arts & Culture initiative, and co-curating the international exhibit, The Sum of Many Parts, 25 Quiltmakers in 21st-Century America.
 
Teresa has contributed to numerous media projects, educational publications, and scholarly journals, curated museum exhibits and independent film series, and frequently serves as a project consultant, lecturer, festival stage manager, and grant panelist. She holds an MA in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University (Bowling Green, KY). Previously, Teresa was a staff member for the following programs: Florida Folklife Program, Kentucky Folklife Program, and the Maine Folklife Center. Teresa is a 2021recipient of the Benjamin A. Botkin Prize for lifetime achievement in public folklore from
The American Folklore Society. She serves on the board of directors for the Center for Cultural Vibrancy (Richmond, VA).