A product of the Millennial Traditional Artists Project by the Folklife Program of the North Carolina Arts Council

The Millennial Traditional Artists (MTA) Directory documents next-generation artists working within traditional genres and cultures found across the state of North Carolina. This directory is the outcome of a three-year initiative by the Folklife Program of the North Carolina Arts Council to identify, serve, and promote the needs of traditional artists at the early stages of their careers. The MTA Project emerged from the need to forge new relationships and methods of communication and service with traditional artists in the age of digital media and self-representation. Although the term “Millennial” formally refers to the generation born between the years of 1981 and 1996, this directory more broadly uses the term to refer to artists emerging in the new millennium. This generation has been shaped by unprecedented degrees of geographic mobility, social connectivity, and information exchange - experiences which lend them a unique relationship to identity, sense of place, and the relationship between local and popular cultures. Viewing this generation of artists all together highlights which cultural inheritances and influences they are changing and which they are preserving. They are a diverse and dynamic group that defies generalization but are united by a common commitment to the arts and practices created by shared knowledge, values, relationships, and lived experience. In that spirit this directory takes a broad and inclusive view of traditional arts and the artists who practice them, including both those who have learned time-honored expressive practices within deeply rooted families and those who are forging their communities anew. Many artists featured in the MTA Directory were identified by folklorists working within various cultural communities in North Carolina, or were featured at the Generation Now! NC Folklife Area at the 2017 National Folk Festival. Others self-identified as emerging artists engaged with themes of culture and tradition through participation in surveys, regional workshop gatherings, and collaborative photography sessions organized through the Millennial Traditional Artists Project. While this directory features a sampling of our state’s emerging generation of traditional artists, we hope that it will also inspire its readers to discover the many other young artists within their communities who are keeping and creating the cultural arts of North Carolina.