Smithsonian’s 2025 Folklife Festival Promotes Traditional Building Trades July 2-5

Each summer, the Smithsonian holds their annual Folklife Festival. Free and open to the public and held on the National Mall, the festival is an exhibition and celebration of living cultural heritage, featuring live performances, demonstrations, and narrative sessions to facilitate cultural exchange. This year's festival theme is "Youth and the Future of Culture," and one of their living exhibitions, called "Next Generation Artisans," highlights the traditional building trades.

The program aims to increase public awareness of the valuable contributions that craftspeople in the traditional building arts make to our nation’s cultural heritage, highlight crucial heritage trades training efforts and career opportunities, and inspire the next generation of craftspeople to learn, practice, and preserve these important trades.

The festival program will feature approximately 40 participants from a broad range of traditional building trades training programs and historic preservation advocacy initiatives. Through ongoing craft demonstrations, hands-on workshops, participatory visitor activities, and informal discussions on the narrative stage, the program shines a spotlight on the intergenerational transmission of traditional knowledge, skills, and cultural heritage, foregrounding the diverse voices, perspectives, and experiences of young people learning the crafts and the master artisans dedicated to passing on their knowledge and traditions to the next generation.

The 2025 festival dates are July 2 through July 7. Ongoing activities will take place daily from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. This living exhibit will comprise a cluster of craft demonstration tents (“artisan workshops”) and a small, intimate narrative stage with informal moderated discussion sessions programmed every hour throughout the day.

Case studies and participants identified thus far include a diverse group of young learners paired with master craftspeople and preservation experts from a range of traditional trades training and advocacy programs, including the American College of the Building Arts, the National Park Service Historic Preservation Training Center Traditional Trades Advancement Program (TTAP), Mather Building Arts & Craftsmanship High School, Washington National Cathedral’s Earthquake Restoration Project, Mount Vernon’s Preservation Craft Internship Program, the New Orleans Master Crafts Guild, the National Trust for Historic Preservation HOPE Crew (Hands-On Preservation Experience), the Campaign for Historic Trades, and John Canning & Co. Preservation & Restoration Decorative Arts.