Community Events

A selection of events produced outside of traditional venues for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. All events were curated, designed, and executed by Nichole Procopenko and co-curator Sojin Kim.

Mt. Pleasant: The social Power of Music

On August 11, 2019, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival partnered with Lost Origins Gallery to continue its D.C.: The Social Power of Music programming by channeling this history and local vibe to explore music and social practice, highlighting the voices of women artists. The full day of activities featured performances in Lamont Park, Music + Community in Mt. Pleasant walking tours, Demonstrations and activities by the DC Public Library’s Punk Archives and Memory Lab and more.

DC Music Preservation Pop-up

Visitors were encouraged to record their own Washington music stories, create zines, and meet people at the heart of sustaining local music. Participating organizations included D.C. Public Library Punk and Go-Go Archives, Anacostia Community Museum, Globe Collection and Press at MICA, UMD Performing Arts Library, Howard University Comunication, Culture and Media Studies, Check It Enterprises, Don’t Mute the Movement, Interactivity Foundation, National Park Service Cultural Resources, and Ralph Rinzler Archives and Collections. Several local record labels including Dischord, Electric Cowbell, and Carpark, among others, were selling merchandise.

Breaking the Sound Barrier

In partnership with Apple Carnegie Library’s Storymakers Festival we featured Wawa and DJ SupaLee (Music and Deaf Culture) Music is more than an auditory experience—it is also a visual, kinetic, rhythmic, and lyrical experience. This session, part discussion and pat performance, explored how music inD/deaf culture is interpreted, engaged, composed, and performed with DMV-based hip-hop artist WAWA and DJ SupaLee.