As of February 2025, the Philadelphia Folklore Project is excited to announce the transfer of its archive, a cherished repository of local folk and traditional arts and grassroots activism, to the Special Collections Research Center as part of the Urban Archives at Temple University. This transition marks a significant step in preserving the city’s folk cultural history while expanding access to the treasured stories, objects, and arts in the folklife archive.
The folklife archive of the Philadelphia Folklore Project (PFP) preserves primary ethnographic materials documenting the folklife, arts, history, and culture of local communities in the Philadelphia region. It includes PFP’s administrative history, exhibits, publications and programs, as well as records of significant but often ephemeral community events, traditions, and arts, captured in various formats and languages, including Khmer, Chinese, Lao, Vietnamese, Tibetan, Spanish, and English. The archive supports PFP’s mission to advance folk arts for social change, and is a valuable resource for scholars, artists, and families, preserving diverse materials such as photos, recordings, artifacts, and field notes. Key subjects include community dance traditions, folk arts of social change, African American folklife, and the cultural traditions of Cambodian, Hmong, and Liberian communities, among others.
Please click here for a press release with complete details.
For questions, please contact Mia Kang, Executive Director, at mia@folkloreproject.org or 215-726-1106.