One blacksmith works at the anvil with hammer while the second observes.

Photographed in an unfinished basement with wooden slats above her head, Mary Luka Kemir stands peering to the right smiling at someone off-camera. Mary is a taller Black woman, her dark black hair is tied in the back in a ponytail. She has high shiny cheeks, and wears a short sleeved white shirt tucked into an African patterned purple and yellow skirt. Mary wears a beaded necklace and holds a saucer to it, scraping the plate against the beads to make music.

Master gospel vocalist and pianist Doris Frazier photographed performing with her apprentice Peyton Boyd in 2016. Doris Frazier stands behind her apprentice wearing a long sleeve all black outfit, she is an elderly lightskinned Black woman with short cropped grey hair. Her apprentice Peyton Boyd appears beside her wearing a tuxedo top and black bottoms, he is a younger Black male. Peyton Boyd is playing the electric keyboard and singing.

DEADLINE FOR 2022-2023 SUBMISSIONS HAS PASSED.

Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program funds master artist and apprentice teams who are committed to sustaining their artistic traditions and cultural heritage. Priority is given to masters and apprentices who share cultural communities. Priority is also given to living art forms with fewer remaining practitioners. The Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program seeks new applicants each year to better represent the spectrum of cultural communities across the state.

Printable Application Available for Download: Point and Click Here

Leave message for assistance by Folk Arts Specialist Deb Bailey at 573-882-3653 or BaileyDA@missouri.edu for in-depth assistance before August 15, 2022.

Celebrating the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program

Missouri hosts one of the oldest, continuous statewide folk arts apprenticeship programs in the United States, established in 1984. In that first year, the apprenticeship program featured Missouri’s musical traditions, from old-time and gospel, to blues and jazz. The project sponsored ten apprenticeships. In the following year, the range of art forms was nearly equally divided between music traditions and material culture (saddlemaking, chair building, coverlet weaving, basketmaking, joinery, and blacksmithing).

Since then, over five hundred individual traditional artists–many in underserved rural, inner city, and ethnic communities in every corner of the state–have participated in the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program.