Culture, Unfiltered?
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Posted by: Charlene Cerny
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect…
-- E.M. Forster, Howards End
I was recently shuffling through my briefcase and unearthed a slightly tattered article from The New York Times T Magazine from May 2008. In the cover photograph, Jacqueline Kennedy and her sister Lee Radziwill sit high atop an elephant as they tour India in 1962. Bystanders look on from below as the beautiful sisters sit, untouched and aloof, physically if not psychologically.
According to journalist Anna Louie Sussman, it looks like this mode of travel - disconnected, filtered and detached - is no longer in vogue. People are increasingly wanting “unfiltered culture” when they travel, hands-on and direct. Read the full (uncrumpled) article here.
Sussman’s article also quotes high-end travel consultant Lisa Lindblad as saying it’s a sense of impending loss that drives this urge for travelers to engage: “People are sensing that stuff is going,” she says. “Not just places but people.”
Although we’re no travel agency at the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, we are in the business of bridging cultural divides, and doing our best to save endangered cultural traditions, by creating a market to connect the world’s folk with appreciative buyers.
On July 11 and 12, 2009, over 150 artists, from as such far-flung places as Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, will converge on Santa Fe once again. Visitors at the Market will have an opportunity to meet them firsthand. And also to spend their dollars to bring some beauty and meaning into their own lives while doing some good along the way.
Last year, Market artists earned over $2 million in two days—taking home 93%, or an average of $16,000 per booth. Since 97% of the folk artists come from developing countries where the per capita income is less than $750 per year, these earnings can be life-changing. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDKClCdsFLk for Sodhwa’s story).
No passport required!
--Charlene Cerny
Executive Director
Santa Fe International Folk Art Market
