Folk and Traditional Arts

We convened twelve monthly group meetings training on storytelling techniques, and 58 one-on-one trainings with a master Lao storyteller, in addition to over 42 informal meetings of the Lao Storyteller fellows with local Minnesota storytellers outside of the Lao community. They went on to participate in numerous mainstream or Asian American events as a Lao American storyteller including the Twin Cities Dragon Festival, the Autumn Moon Festival, Twin Cities World Refugee Day, and the International Lao Studies Conference. We convened four Public Storytelling Performances at the Harrison on June 23rd, August 10th, October 13th,January 18, 2013 with an average of 60 to 80 people in attendance. We organized a 3-day Storytelling/Arts Festival on February 21-23, 2013 with over 300 people in attendance. Our storytellers also told traditional stories during the Lao New Year Festival on April 13th-15th in English and Lao to an audience of ca. 500. Evaluations were done by journals, notes, and survey. 2: Formally, we emerged with five apprentice storytellers while providing a master storyteller in the Lao community a chance to grow and improve his skills, and we built an audience for Lao storytellers with over 1,510 directly participating in events convened by our organization, in addition to those organized by others. We evaluated this through tickets given to the audience members (performances were free with suggested donations) and sign in sheets.