Rooted, Practiced, Sustained
News and Announcements
March 2, 2026
Guidelines Available: 2026 Living Traditions Fellowships
Missouri Folk Arts invites nominations for the 2026 Living Traditions Fellowships. These awards seek to recognize the excellence and lifetime achievement of living traditional artists and community scholars in the Show Me State. Living Traditions Fellowships honor these individuals’ deep-rooted contributions to Missouri’s traditional arts and their vibrant communities. Nominations, per the guidelines linked below, are due via email by April 6, 2026. Accessibility. Missouri Folk Arts intends for the nomination process to be accessible to all. Please notify staff, ideally by March 16, 2026, for assistance per the American Disabilities Act or for issues organizing nomination materials.
Feb. 13, 2026
Award Making Artist, TJ Southard
When Missouri Folk Arts established the Living Traditions Fellowships in 2023, staff knew that the honor required a dynamic, physical memento to symbolize the achievements of these artistically excellent Missouri traditional artists and community scholars. Woodworker TJ Southard, two-time alumnus of the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, was up for the job of translating staff ideas into reality. Southard, proprietor of Fresh Sawdust in Perryville, Mo., was eager to take on the challenge. He transformed walnut that he’d harvested previously from his property into beautifully personalized plaques that feature a Missouri Star quilt block, as they…
Dec. 23, 2025
Forty Years of Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program
– history, context, and impact The traditional arts are a cultural fusion of the arts and the humanities, where artistic excellence and repertoire, community ideals, and traditional knowledge are persistently entwined. Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP) formally launched in fiscal year 1985 with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and Missouri Arts Council. As of 2025, the project has supported 464 apprenticeships—highlighting, elevating, and sustaining a vast array of traditional art forms and artists from every corner of the state. From April to December 2025, Missouri Folk Arts staff have co-coordinated activities supported by a Missouri Humanities’…