WORKSHOPS, CLASSES, + TALKS
In 2021, Caledonia Northern Folk Studios is pleased to be expanding out consultancy efforts to include a house-developed roster of classes & workshops to help bring our award-winning methods, ethics, & praxes in community-based cultural work for social justice to your own practice, organization, or community. We’re launching with a core curriculum roster that represents the “best of” Caledonia Northern Folk Studios, as well as some of our signature approaches to the ethics, politics, & practice of fieldwork, budgeting, grant-writing, & community engagement; & we’ll also periodically offer new and one-off classes — so watch this space!
WHAT WE OFFER: FORMATS + MODES
Caledonia Northern Folk Studios classes & workshops are available in three different modes, depending on your needs, budget, learning style, & availability:
Self-Service Online Classes (licensed either for an individual, or for an organization) for self-paced, on-demand online learning; course content will remain available to you in perpetuity after your completion of the course.
Synchronous, Live-Learning Online Classes & Workshops With Interactive Class Community, for those practitioners & organizations who prefer to learn in real-time, with a dedicated peer learning group. These courses will be offered on a posted schedule; so watch this page to look out for registration deadlines and information about upcoming classes. We also offer CNFS Live Online Class “Pool Parties.” If you’re interested in a synchronous online class that’s a part of our posted schedule for your non-profit, organization, or university, simply “book the whole pool,” and order a custom online synchronous class to meet your needs, following & mirroring our live class schedule. To be fair to other participants, we prefer to keep our main courses for individual registrants only, to prevent any one organization or institution dominating activities & scenarios.
Custom Workshops & Classes (& Custom Series) for organizations, institutions, or (our preference!) social movements, networks, and individual activists, artists, & practitioners wanting to hone your cultural documentation, fundraising, community-based cultural work capacity-building, or cultural work-for-social-justice ethics skills. Feel free to pick from our roster of established CNFS classes; or book a free 30 minute initial consult with us to plan a custom workshop or series of classes to fit your organization or project’s needs!
We occasionally also offer public, sliding-scale or “pay-what-you-can” course offerings: either as a part of series hosted by other organizations; or as a part of programming by the Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History Program in Marion County, Ohio. Check our Events Page for a listing of upcoming public workshops, classes, & events to get a taste of our suite of offerings; or sign up for our on-demand & in-house options below!
EQUITY BUDGETING + ETHICS OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT TRAININGS, COACHING, + CONSULTS
We also are proud to be collaborating to offer a flagship workshop on Caledonia Northern Folk Studios & the Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History Program’s signature economic-justice-for-social-justice-cultural-work model, equity budgeting, in collaboration with New York City-based oral historian & labor organizer Sarah Dziedzic. This dynamic, team-taught workshop is available as a self-serve class for individuals, a self-serve class for organizations (licensed for up to ten users), or as a custom-booked synchronous workshop or series for individuals or organizations. We offer both an Equity Budgeting 101 workshop to introduce our model to beginnings, as well as an Equity Budgeting Master-Class for cultural workers, organizations, & movement-based practitioners wanting to take a deeper dive into their budgeting cultures & to come away with plans & documents to begin equity budgeting in your work right away.
WORKSHOP + COACHING // CONSULTANCY PACKAGES
Our live, synchronous courses offer three price-points and three distinct packages based on your needs. Our baseline package offers full access to our synchronous course, all course materials, & an introductory & follow-up email. Our workshop package, for select workshops, offers one to two additional optional add-on group workshops for class participants who elect this option, to workshop or review your own proposals, materials, & situations in a more personalized setting. Finally, our consultancy package offers you or your organization the option to boost your synchronous class or workshop experience with five to twenty 1:1 consultancy hours with CNFS Principal Jess Lamar Reece Holler and/or Jess & Sarah (for our co-developed, team-taught Equity Budgeting offerings) to fully work thru custom solutions for your project, organizational situation, or movement community.
WHAT DOES IT COST? WHY DOES IT COST?
Rates for all workshops reflect living wages rates of pay for our team, and, like all CNFS projects, contribute to our ongoing local North-Central Ohio historic preservation leadership work to rehabilitate the historic Temple & Masonic Block buildings in downtown Caledonia, Ohio; and to fundraise towards the launch of the North-Central Ohio Folklife Center: a regional cultural worker capacity-builder & incubator mobilizing community-based folk/cultural arts and critical heritage work for social, racial, economic, & environmental justice in the twelve-county North-Central Ohio region. Our mother organization, North-Central Ohio Folklife, launched as an Ohio non-profit in 2020; and we are building our board, securing our IRS 503(c)(3) charitable tax status, and working on our brick-&-mortar location & five-year program plan in 2021! So while you build your toolkit of equitable cultural work methods through our accessible courses & workshops, you’ll also be helping grow our transformative community efforts in & across North-Central Ohio, starting with our home base in Marion County.
Caledonia Northern Folk Studios is committed to accessibility & economic justice in everything that we do; and our studio’s mission & vision is to get the tools of radical, transformative cultural work-for-social-justice into the hands of working-class communities & working-class practitioners just like us. To this end, we offer sliding-scale rates for self-identified low-income, working-class, and BIPOC cultural workers, artists, & activists seeking access to our courses; and for community-based non-profits with annual budgets less than $200,000 per year. We also offer and encourage a pay-it-forward option for well-resourced non-profits and institutions (like universities), to help subsidize our sliding-scale program for working-class practitioners. Sliding scale payment will be available on your course booking form; please just identify your rate and go from there.
We do ask that all practitioners & organizations who can afford to pay the full rates do so, as that helps keep our own upstart, working-class consultancy afloat, & passing it on! Those who can are also able to pay it forward; & help support subsidized or fully-covered workshop opportunities for working-class, low-income, BIPOC, & other historically marginalized practitioners seeking these trainings! Contact us, below to discuss scheduling a custom workshop for your organization!
CURRENT CLASS + WORKSHOP OFFERINGS
ETHICS OF COMMUNITY-BASED CULTURAL WORK FOR JUSTICE
EQUITY BUDGETING 101: AN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL WORK BUDGETING FOR SOCIAL Justice
Our flagship workshop: based in the Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History Model and movements for organizing freelancer labor, & co-developed & co-taught with the incredible NYC-based oral historian & organizer Sarah Dziedzic. Equity Budgeting 101 is an all-inclusive introduction to the pratices & rationale behind Equity Budgeting — a “full ecology” movement for economic justice in cultural work founded at the Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History Program, & which insists on fair pay for both project cultural workers, and for community members expected to participate in & consult on a project — including for oral history narrators and folk/cultural artists who may be interviewed or documented for a project.
Our Equity Budgeting 101 Workshop provides a quick & accessible introduction to the necessary work of equity budgeting, its deep roots in Black-led movements for racial & economic justice, & why equity budgeting is so necessary to root out extractive practices in the cultural work sphere. The workshop also provides comprehensive tips & best practices towards enacting equity budget — both for practitioners & for organizations.
EQUITY BUDGETING MASTERCLASS FOR PRACTITIONERS + ORGANIZATIONS: FROM EXTRACTION TO THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY
Similarly co-developed & co-taught with oral historian & labor organizer Sarah Dziedzic, this Equity Budgeting Masterclass expands the work of our Equity Budgeting 101 class/workshop, and includes a custom organizational or practitioner budget audit session & worksheet tool, where you’ll be supported in doing a full audit of an existing budget you use for cultural work projects, & in assessing what sorts of labor you do — & don’t — ordinarily compensate; & in working with the Equity Budgeting Model to create custom, achievable plans for getting your organizational budgeting protocols more in line with economic justice … thus enabling a wider swathe of community members to equitably participate in & access your organizational work!
ETHICS OF OWNERSHIP IN COMMUNITY-BASED CULTURAL WORK
You might not think of arrangements around who owns what on a community-based cultural work project as a matter of equity or economics … but you might want to think again! Designing for equitable ownership // rights provisions is an underexamined, & critical, part of Equity Budgeting work. This foundational Equity Budgeting workshop looks at the Ethics of Ownership, Rights, Crediting, Citation, & Collaboration as critical components of dreaming reparative, justice-aligned community engagement & cultural work projects for your community organization or artistic practice. Rooted jointly in a consideration of labor justice & solidarity for cultural workers & community members you may work with, and in racial justice understandings of the importance & necessity of consent for ethical project work, this workshop teaches Caledonia Northern Folk Studios' tried & true approach to desgining a working set of Ownership, Rights, Crediting/Citation & Collaboration Ethics/Expectations that can be modularly adapted to your organization or project's various needs.
JUSTICE-ALIGNMENT FOR NON-PROFITS + CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS
DIVESTING FROM WHITENESS for HISTORICALLY WHITE-LED, WHITE-SERVING CULTURAL NON-PROFITS
This foundational workshop in our Justice-Alignment for Non-Profits & Cultural Organizations series is targeted to cultural heritage & other allied community organizations who have historically served white audiences, & have been lead by white staff members & a majority-white board of directors. The workshop covers ten basic principles towards how white-led, white-serving institutions can become not just allies, but active accomplices in the necessary work of racial justice by actively divesting from white supremacy as a culture & as an infrastructure. This workshop challenges organizations to push beyond shallow, ventriloquist “PR” models of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion towards the necessary structural, redistributive change that will make your organization a healthy place to work for Black leadership, & will make your programs & spaces more safe, reparative, & responsive to Black, Brown, Indigenous, & People of Color communities you wish to serve. Be prepared to leave your excuses & your token examples of how you’ve disrupted whiteness at the door. This workshop is for organizations who want to get real about harmful legacies of whiteness, & do better for the movement for justice.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE: HOW TO DIVEST FROM YOUR OWN AUTHORITY & TRULY START BUILDING BY, WITH, & FOR YOUR COMMUNITY
This next-step workshop in our Justice-Alignment for Non-Profits & Cultural Organizations series looks at the ethics & politics of community engagement: an important & misunderstood praxis in community-based cultural work. We start by disrupting two ubiquitous buzzwords in contemporary cultural heritage & non-profit practice: “community” and “collaboration.” What have these terms come to mean in the non-profit industrial complex; and what might they mean, for justice? This workshop tackles the differences between community-led, community-based, & community-engaged projects; & trains participants in leading-edge praxis for community-based work from the Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History Program model: community co-curation, emergent design (from adrienne maree brown’s emergent strategy), & equity budgeting. We’ll cover histories & models of “sharing authority” from public history & oral history practice and from the community-based arts worlds; & participants will come away with a one-page praxis model & ethics statement to guide their organization’s future work by & with their communities.
DESIGNING A RESPONSIVE, MOVEMENT-BASED PUBLIC HUMANITIES OR ARTS PROJECT (OR PROGRAM) FROM A to Z
This culminating workshop in the Justice-Alignment for Non-Profits & Cultural Organizations series is a hands-on, how-to guide for designing a public humanities or arts project or program rooted in actual community need, & driven by (paid) community members. We’ll walk through models for designing community-led & community-collaborative projects; & will discuss, in particular, how much models differ from what grant funders often expect to see. We’ll design strategies to win funding for our responsive, community-based projects anyway! Participants will come away with a praxis sketch for their project, a backwards calendar for community-collaborative design, & a sample budget for a community co-curated public humanities project that leaves critical decisions around spending, themes, & format in the hands of community members.
CULTURAL DOCUMENTATION SKILLS + METHODS
ORAL HISTORY 101
This foundational course in our Oral History Workshops series covers all of the basics of starting an oral history project — from groundwork & community relations, to navigating research, consent form design, & baseline interview questions, to the art & ethics of the interview experience, to mobilizing your interviews for community & movement projects. This four-part workshop provides hands-on instruction in the praxis of oral history, and is designed for justice-aligned organizations & practitioners who wish to interrogate & disrupt extractive legacies of oral history & cultural work. As such, the workshop also includes a quick introduction to principles of Equity Budgeting (i.e.: pay your narrators!) in oral history work; & training in reparative, post-custodial models of imagining consent & (co-) ownership of project materials. This workshop will give you everything you or your organization needs to start an oral history project or program of your very own.
ORAL HISTORY MASTER CLASS: STARTING AN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
This Oral History Master Class builds on the foundational training of our Caledonia Northern Folk Studios Oral History 101 workshop, but with a focus on designing for an oral history project — a themed or connected series of interviews. This master class covers grant-funding for oral history projects, imagining project design at the project level, ethics & politics of partnerships with groups & movements, & backwards design for public humanities, social justice movement or arts-world destinies for your oral history project. We’ll also cover questions of staffing, training, equity budgeting for narrators, & archival maintenance of oral history project materials at a more in-depth level than in the Oral History 101 workshop. This workshop is ideal for both individual practitioners & organizations with a project design or concept for a multi-interview oral history project already in mind. The workshop will provide opportunities for you to workshop & develop your idea throughout the project. You’ll come away with an Oral History Project Plan, Funding Matrix, and Post-Interview Use Plan that you can use for grant applications, convincing your board, or drumming up local support!
ORAL HISTORY MASTER CLASS: STARTING AN ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
This Oral History Master Class builds on our foundational Caledonia Northern Folk Studios Oral History 101 workshop and our Starting an Oral History Project Oral History Masterclass, and is instead focusing on building & sustaining an ethical, long-term oral history program for your community organization, movement, or institution. Unlike other oral history workshops out there, this masterclass is specifically designed for grassroots & movement-based groups seeking to start a sustainable, ethical oral history program without the infrastructures, funding, or staff support available to larger, well-funded institutions. Although the workshop will still be appropriate to participants from large universities, well-endowed non-profits, & private businesses, please bear in mind that the focus will be on capacity-building strategies for grassroots and peoples’ movements & organizations, regardless of 501(c)(3) status. Participants will come away with an Oral History Program 10-Year Strategic Plan, a Fundraising & Sustainability Plan, and a 10-Year Projects & Program Plan to map out the foci of your oral history program, & how your collecting efforts will transform into collaborative community programming & initiatives.
FOLKLIFE 101: AN INTRODUCTION TO FOLK & CULTURAL ARTS
This foundational workshop in our cultural documentation series is an introduction to the folk & cultural arts — including folk & cultural arts genres, the history of public folklore work in the United States, & the possibilities & politics of folk/cultural/traditional arts programming. Equal parts disciplinary & public humanities history of the field of Folklore Studies & the practice of Public-Sector // Community Folklife, and a dynamic investigation of folklife & traditional arts definitions, genres, & processes, this workshop is intended for community cultural arts, heritage, & historic institutions considering beginning collecting, documentation, or programming work in the folk/traditional arts … or just for anyone interested in folklife! We’ll close with a case study from the Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History Program of how folk & cultural arts can become catalysts for building arts-based livelihoods in hard-hit communities; and a potential means to solidarity economies.
CULTURAL ARTS DOCUMENTATION MASTER SERIES: * FULL SERIES *~
This Cultural Arts Documentation Master Series provides access to a comprehensive suite of training in documentary arts necessary for documenting folk, cultural, & traditional arts — & beyond! — in your home communities. Public-sector folklife work is documentary arts work; &, when done right, requires a carefully-honed, multi-disciplinary documentary arts skillset combining documentary photography, videography, audio recording, &, often, soundscape & ambient documentation. Sadly, few public folklore graduate programs provide comprehensive training in the documentary arts. The success of our programs, in a media-rich world, can depend on the ability of our photography, audio recordings, & videos to clearly, beautifully, & compellingly share the stories of the cultural artists in our community. At the same time, the field of cultural documentary arts practice is a fraught one — especially when a documentary artist from a dominant positionality is tasked with documenting communities of color. Equal parts arts practice workshop & ethics bootcamp, this master class explores both the praxis & right politics of documentary arts work; & will provide practitioners, artists, & organizations alike with the fundamental aesthetic & ethical skills necessary to respectfully, dynamically, collaboratively document & amplify cultural arts in your community.
CULTURAL ARTS DOCUMENTATION MASTER SERIES: DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY
This Cultural Arts Documentation Master Series workshop is a crash-course in one of the most critical but understudied aspects of public folklife + cultural arts documentation practice: photography! Very few, if any, public folklife or public history training programs include explicit, arts-based training in the practice — & politics/ethics — of documentary photography; yet photography is the primary way most public folklife programs not only document & share local cultural arts for their audiences, but make the case for why this work matters to funders. But what are the ethical and political dynamics of documenting other peoples’ faces, homes, & cultural arts traditions … especially across lines of significant racial, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, or linguistic difference? And who owns documentary folklife photography: the photographer? The program you work for? The artist whose work or face you are documenting? This workshop covers both conventional principles of aesthetics in documentary photography — including portrait photography, object photography, & landscape/context photography — and gives you space to reflect on & reparatively write into your own ethical expectations & standards around documentary arts. You’ll come away with an active artists’ statement of ethics you can use to guide your own photography practice; as well as a honed sense of the aesthetics of composition & photography practice that will meet you, your program, and your collaborators’ needs while also matching your ethics.
CULTURAL ARTS DOCUMENTATION MASTER SERIES: RECORDING AUDIO
This Cultural Arts Documentation Master Series workshop covers perhaps the most versatile & pervasive documentary arts form across public folklife + oral history practice: recording audio. This workshop frees up the practice, aesthetics, & technics of recording audio from particular interview formats; & instead looks at recording audio holistically. We’ll cover equipment, practices & politics of audio recording, & we’ll cover the range of genres of audio recording that need to be in the toolkit of folklife // documentary arts practitioner — including the oral history // life history interview, the object interview, the process/practice interview, the walking interview, & both music & ambient sound documentation. We’ll also explore the ethics of each of those audio recording situations, since audio recording is almost always a dialogic experience; & think about how consent, ownership, rights, & involvement to collaborate on future derivative works may look different across these different formats & situations. We’ll also, briefly, explore the vast range of derivative arts, public humanities, & movement works that can come from raw field audio recording: including edited interview clips, soundscape compositions, community radio, & more. You’ll come away with deep reflection on your own praxis & philosophy of audio recording work; & a versatile toolkit to support your future audio documentation work. Note: this is not a podcasting workshop!
CULTURAL ARTS DOCUMENTATION MASTER SERIES:
ENVIRONMENTAL + SOUNDSCAPE RECORDING
Following in the tradition of Irv Teibel, this Cultural Arts Documentation Master Series Workshop explores the history & praxis of ambient, environmental soundscape recording. We’ll cover the uncomfortable but important politics of the rise of environmental soundscape recording as a part of the very white soundscape ecology movement led by Canadian soundscape artist R. Murray Schafer in the 1970s; & then will explore the explosion of environmental sound recording as a New Age phenomenon with the ENVIRONMENTS LP series, & the vibrant 1980s history of experimental ambient music production, including the Japanese kankyo ongaku // “environmental music” moment. Then, we’ll pivot to practical hands-on training in the art of environmental soundscape recording. Modules will cover equipment choices, soundscape recording techniques, the ethics of soundscape recording; & the destinies & ethics of editing raw soundscape materials into composed soundscape pieces! Participants will come away with a 1-pager project sheet for an ambient/environmental soundscape project of your choosing!