Collect & Preserve
Of the People: Widening the Path seeks to empower community members who live and work in under-represented communities to gather, preserve, and share their contemporary histories through audio visual documentation as part of the national record.
Community Collections Grants
Community Collections Grants from the American Folklife Center support contemporary cultural field research within diverse communities. Opportunities are available for Individuals and Organizations.
Meet the 2024 Community Collection Grant recipients
The American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress was established to preserve and present American folklife through programs of research, documentation and more. Though this grant program, the center will expand its collection by funding and supporting individuals and organizations in collecting and archiving contemporary cultural expressions and traditions that may otherwise be absent from the national record. The Library will offer fellowships to individuals to work within their communities to produce ethnographic cultural documentation, such as oral history interviews and audio-visual recordings of cultural activity, from the community perspective. The center will archive the collections from this fieldwork to preserve and showcase this rich and valuable cultural documentation.