Cultural Sustainability

 This blog serves the Cultural Sustainability Master of the Arts program at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland. We are building a program to train the next generation of cultural specialists to identify and sustain the culture that matters most to communities. This could include forms that have been described as folklore, folklife, intangible cultural heritage, or tradition. We also embrace and support  forms and practices that emerge from the Cultural Sustainability process, a methodology based on participation/inquiry/documentation/relationship building to understand with depth and subtlety the needs and values of communties of all kinds to experience a vital cultural life together. We see this process as critical to broader efforts to address this century’s major challenge of social, economic, environmental, and cultural  transformation to a way of human life that exists in balance with the limitations of our planet, whilst allowing communities and individuals to thrive and meet their potential.

• This blog will serve as a node of communication and connection, sharing and noting threads of cultural sustainability we see across our work and research.
• It will be a place for critical reflection on our practices and ideas, and a place to explore intellectual linkages and issues that arise as this emerging movement takes form in the coming years.
• As the Cultural Sustainability program unfolds, it will be a place to link to and highlight student blogs that are a key intrinsic part of the program. We intend to help foster an online “neighborhood” around Cultural Sustainability led by the work of our students. It is through their work that this important work will be articulated in practice.

This blog is a group blog and will feature posts by program faculty and others who will be invited to contribute. Rory Turner, Academic Director of the Cultural Sustainability program at Goucher College serves as blog editor. For more on him, and other blog contributors, check out our contributors page.