New Jersey Folk Festival

From the Beginning…

When the festival was created in 1975, only two students were involved in its organization and management under Angus Gillespie. Today, eleven students serve on the planning committee, which meets for three hours once a week under the direction of faculty advisors Maria Kennedy, Matt Hueston, and Carla Cevasco.

In addition to providing educational opportunities to festival-goers, the New Jersey Folk Festival (NJFF) provides students with a workspace to learn leadership and management skills. The festival is the end-product of a three-credit class which offers undergraduate instruction in running a folk festival with the public presentation of culture. The NJFF is one of the handful of folk festivals in the U.S. managed by undergraduate students. The students are responsible for all aspects of advertising, planning, and producing an event that celebrates the diverse multicultural and indigenous folk life of New Jersey and the surrounding region.

In the first semester of the class, the students learn about folklore and cultural studies, including the distinction between "traditional" versus "revival" folk music, theoretical problems associated with publicly presenting ethnic culture, the history and aesthetic sensibilities of the craft presenters and performers, as well as more practical instruction in how to write press releases and conduct radio interviews. The second semester of the class functions as a business meeting, complete with progress reports from coordinators, "breakaway" management team work sessions, and problem-solving.