The Folk Arts Center has a new committee of volunteers, the Group Advising on Strategic Planning (acronymically known as GASP!). The series is designed to highlight other traditional arts forms – Some Other Folk Arts (or SOFA), if you will. Therefore, the Thursday series will spotlight a wide-ranging collection of artists and artisans demonstrating and/or talking about their crafts!

We will kick off the series next Thursday, September 10, with Richard Powers, who will be with us as we re-broadcast his recent talk on the Swing and Jazz age. If you missed it the first time, we hope you can clear your calendar and join us next week. And if you were there and are like me, it will be a great opportunity to watch it again and pick up all the tangy details you missed the first time around!

The next week is Bennett Clifford, live from his kitchen on September 17 as he shares with us recipes he enjoyed and mastered while he lived in the Republic of Georgia! We will appreciate not only the cooking, but stories of his experiences in Georgia to go along with it!

October 1 will feature Susan Lind-Sinanian making Armenian paklava. Many of you participated in her dance workshop with her husband Gary back in June, and we are so pleased to have her back in front of the online camera again! Is it a coincidence that this baking workshop will be just two days before Tom Bozigian’s Armenian dance workshop on October 3? Why, no it is not!

As you can well imagine, launching an effort like this takes a lot of work and there are many moving parts, including updating websites, collecting information about the leaders and their subject matter, etc. So please bear with us as we get our ducks in a row! (Scroll to the bottom for an illustration of us getting our afore-mentioned ducks in a row….)

Looking ahead (a partial listing)

All workshops begin at 7:00pm (Boston time)

September 10: Richard Powers re-broadcast
September 12: Fun with Ahmet!
September 17: Georgian cooking with Bennett Clifford
September 19: Miroslav Marčetic Serbian dance workshop
September 26: Balkan dancing with Michael Ginsburg

October 1: Learn how to make Armenian paklava with Susan Lind-Sinanian
October 3: Armenian dance workshop with Tom Bozigian

Remember – the Folk Arts Center’s website is a trove of information – check it often, as we will be adding more workshops and further details every week!

Happy Labor Day Weekend, everyone!
–Marcie Van Cleave