Traditional art forms thrive and persist throughout the borough of Brooklyn, born out of histories of struggle and opposition that make these artists no stranger to the tensions of the current socio-political climate. During a time when the news cycle overwhelms and inflames and it has become far too easy to focus on the negative, Brooklyn Arts Council invites you to pause and take in the traditions around us. 

Brooklyn Folk Arts & Artists Series, a partnership with Brooklyn Public Library, spotlighted Brooklyn's immigrant communities historically underrepresented by cultural institutions. With an emphasis on art forms in need of preservation, the series included performances by 20 folk and traditional artists throughout Spring 2018.

Citizen Folklife has mobilized artists, grassroots organizations, community advocates, youth, and ethnic media journalists with strong ties to folk and traditional art forms by providing training, resources, microgrant funding, and mentoring to research and share observations of folk arts practices within their own communities. 

The goal of this program is to create an intergenerational experience for traditional artists, while informing the more general public about the roots of these hybrid styles. In 2017, Pakistani tabla player and singer Aziz Peerzada and his son, Saboor, performed traditional Punjabi folk music at BAM Café in downtown Brooklyn.

In the summer of 2016, Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC)’s Folk Arts program had a presence at six community festivals. BAC’s event tents provided friendly neighborhood gathering places for festival-goers to dive into the cultures that drive our borough. From July through September, BAC hosted hands-on workshops, discussions on cultural issues, interviews with artists, and presentations and performances by local groups.

From May 30 through July 26, BAC will celebrate Folk Feet’s 10th anniversary through a series of public programs that will fuse past participants of Folk Feet with emerging traditional dance forms and communities in Brooklyn. In keeping with Folk Feet’s rich tradition, each free public program will feature a mix of teaching workshops and dance showcases.

Brooklyn Arts Council’s The Sweetest Song Festival (TSS), is a month long focus on Brooklyn’s traditional singers and song styles. From April 26 through May 27, The Sweetest Song will present 12 concerts and 8 singing master classes at various Brooklyn venues. The programs will explore a range of singing traditions as practiced and performed in Brooklyn’s immigrant and diaspora communities and engage New Yorkers in a creative, cross-cultural exchange with some of the finest traditional singers living in Brooklyn.

Harborlore Festival is a series of 12 free dance, music and storytelling events throughout Brooklyn exploring the role of water in the artistic traditions of the borough’s diverse immigrant and diaspora communities in a post-Sandy world.

From April 21 – June 10, 2012, BAC explored gender and diaspora in Brooklyn women's traditional genres with six weeks of concerts, performances and workshops.

A series of public programs and workshops featuring folktales, fairy tales, ghost stories, saints’ legends, personal experiences, spoken word, talking drum, narrative dance, and more from Brooklyn storytellers.

Black Brooklyn Renaissance (February 2010 - February 2011) featured performances, exhibitions, symposia and workshops, a conference, an oral history project and an archive. BAC joined forces with artists and organizations across the borough to make Black Brooklyn Renaissance a truly collaborative and holistic endeavor.

Folk Feet Dance Workshops focus on teaching the movement repertoire of specific traditions. Each workshop also provides an overview of the dance’s cultural setting, such as the costume, music and crafts that traditionally accompany it

In August 2008 BAC Folk Arts initiated a year-long project called Days of the Dead in Brooklyn, Diverse Traditions of Mourning and Remembrance (DODB)

Traditional dance is one of the least served areas of the arts in the United States. As a result, many traditional dance groups lack sufficient funding and remain unknown.

Ahlan wa Sahlan! Welcome to Brooklyn Maqam Arab Music Festival, featuring local musicians, bands, and dancers presenting Arab music traditions from Egypt, Yemen, Israel, Tunisia, Palestine, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, and Lebanon.

Beginning in 2005, BAC Folk Arts director Kay Turner initiated annual programming to commemorate September 11, 2001 and also to explore, document, and discuss various memorial traditions, especially those performed in Brooklyn.