Grants & Programs | Ohio Arts Council's Heritage Fellowships

Ohio Heritage Fellowships

In 2003 the Ohio Arts Council partnered with the Ohio Folk Arts Network to create the Ohio Heritage Fellowships to honor Ohio folk artists or groups who are the finest and most influential masters of their particular art forms and traditions.

Ohio Heritage Fellows are among our state's living cultural treasures. They embody the highest level of artistic achievement in their work and the highest level of service in the teaching and other work they do in their communties to ensure that their traditions stay strong.

Each year, the Ohio Arts Council will award up to three $1,500 Ohio Heritage Fellowships to individuals or groups whose work in the folk arts has had a significant impact on the people and communities of the state. The folk and traditional arts grow out of particular cultures and are recognized as the artistic expressions of ethnic, linguistic, occupational or regional groups. The Fellowships will honor Ohio master folk and traditional artists or groups who carry forward the folk traditions of their families and communities through practice and teaching. One of the fellowships may be awarded to an individual or group whose achievements have had a positive impact on the excellence, vitality and public appreciation of folk and traditional arts in Ohio.

The OAC considers nominations for Ohio Heritage Fellowships in three categories: performing arts (folk dance and music), community leadership, and material culture (folk art and crafts). The performing arts and material culture fellowships are given to individuals or groups for their lifelong record of artistic excellence, authenticity and significance. The community leadership fellowship is given to an individual or group whose lifelong achievements have had a lasting positive impact on the excellence, vitality and public appreciation of the folk and traditional arts in Ohio.

To nominate a folk artist or outstanding community leader in the traditional arts for the Ohio Heritage Fellowships please use the Web-based online application form at www.oac.state.oh.us/Search/OhioHeritageFellowships//SearchFellowshipNominations.asp. You can also search the list of previous nominees on this page. Deadline for the 2009 Fellowship Nominations is July 15, 2008*. Nominations are reviewed by a panel of experts in the folk and traditional arts. Awards will be announced in the fall. Self-nomination is not permitted. Nominees must be Ohio residents.

*When a deadline falls on a weekend or holiday, the OAC will accept applications until 5 p.m. on the next business day.

2008 Heritage Fellowship Recipients

Performing Arts

KATIE LAUR, a bluegrass musician from Cincinnati, was born into a musical family that migrated to Detroit from the hills of Tennessee. Her music has taken her from working on the original "Prairie Home Companion" radio show to Russia and to the Kennedy Center. Locally Katie Laur has a very popular radio show on WNKU called "Music from the Hills of Home" on Sundays. She also writes a monthly column for CityBeat. She learned guitar form Junior McIntyre and has had a long and interesting career in Bluegrass Music. She continues to work in Cincinnati to arrange shows and performances to showcase artists of a variety of styles in a variety of venues.

Community Leadership
Howard and Judy Sacks

HOWARD AND JUDY SACKS are recipients of this year's second Ohio Heritage Fellowship for Community Leadership. They have dedicated their lives to the traditional arts and have shared their knowledge to document, preserve and present those arts to a wide audience. Howard Sacks, a sociology professor and director of the Rural Life Center of Kenyon College, and Judy Sacks, an affiliated scholar in Kenyon's American Studies department, are lifelong collaborators, folk music scholars, performers (Howard on guitar, Judy on mandolin), co-authors of the award-winning book Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem and producers of the 1985 album Seems Like Romance to Me: Traditional Fiddle Tunes from Ohio. Fixtures at Kenyon College since 1975, Howard and Judy Sacks directed the Gambier Folk Festival for more than 15 years and were deeply involved with the National Folk Festival for several years. They continued that involvement when Cityfolk brought the National Folk Festival to Dayton for three years (1996-1998), with Howard serving as main stage manager, and as Cityfolk launched the annual Cityfolk Festival in 1999. Howard Sacks was selected in 1994 as Kenyon College's first recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professorship.

Their ongoing educational and community projects about traditional foodways are models for small town and agrarian cultures.

Community Leadership
Faith Patterson

FAITH PATTERSON is a longtime community leader and arts activist from Yellow Springs. She is the driving force behind the annual blues and jazz festival held each fall at the Antioch College Amphitheater and in the college's Kelly Hall. She was a founding members of African American Cross Cultural Works (AACW), a non-profit volunteer organization formed in 1991 to sustain the efforts of the African-American Cultural Week, a community initiative to improve cross-cultural understanding that began as an Antioch Student's senior project. The Blues Fest, the AACW's main vehicle for its work, was first staged in 1997 and has presented dozens of local and regional acts as well as such well-known national performers as Erykah Badu, Deborah Coleman, Mulgrew Miller, Eric Bibb, Guy Davis and comedian Dave Chappelle, whose father, the late Bill Chappelle, was a co-founder with Patterson of the Blues Fest.