Florida Folklife Collection

Albert Head

Since 1972, Head has worked in arts administration beginning with the Fine Arts Council of Florida, and continuing through executive director positions with the Stephen Foster Folklife Center, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the Alabama State Council on the arts. He earned an undergraduate degree in art history and aesthetics from Troy State University and a M.A. in Southern Literature from Auburn University at Montgomery. He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1974 to attend Harvard’s Arts Administration Institute. Head has served two terms on the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies board participating in a wide range of committee work. He has been a member of the Southern Arts Federation board for 25 years  and presided as it’s chair from 1981-83. Head has served on numerous panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and has chaired the Folk Arts and Arts in Education panels. In 1998 he received the Gary Young Award presented by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies for his leadership and achievements in promoting the arts nationally. Head is also a 2012 National Heritage Fellow.

For more info: http://arts.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/albert-b-head and http://blog.al.com/entertainment-press-register/2010/03/al_head_25_years_and_counting.html

Blaine Waide

Blaine Waide is the Programming Manager of the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA). Waide received a B.A. in English and Classical Studies from the University of Arkansas and a M.A. in Folklore from UNC-Chapel Hill. He has worked as managing editor of Sing Out!magazine; as a panelist for the Maryland Traditions Apprenticeship Program; and as a freelance copyeditor for the University of Georgia Press. While serving as Florida State Folklorist from 2011 – 2013, Waide coordinated all core annual activities and co-edited and co-produced the expanded reissue of Drop on Down in Florida: Field Recordings of African American Traditional Music, 1977–1980, which received the Stetson Kennedy Award from the Florida Historical Society in May 2013. As State Folklorist, he conducted a two-year fieldwork survey of the Florida Panhandle and a survey of the Lower St. Johns River Basin.

Amanda Hardeman

Amanda Hardeman is the current State Folklorist and Director of the Florida Folklife Program. She received a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and a M.A. in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University with an emphasis on public sector folklore, photography, and ethnographic film. She has used her skills as a folklorist and documentarian in a variety of capacities with the National Park Service, the Kentucky Folklife Program, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, and the Folk School of St. Louis. As Florida State Folklorist, she serves on the board of the Florida Folklore Society and coordinates the Florida Folklife Program’s core annual programs including fieldwork surveys, the Florida Folklife Apprenticeship Program, the Florida Folk Heritage Awards, the Folklife Area of the Florida Folk Festival, and public outreach events and special projects.

Bill Mansfield

A native North Carolinian, Bill Mansfield began studying folklore when his mother taught him to play the juice harp. His interest in vernacular music grew, and in 1979 he received an apprenticeship grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to study banjo under master musician Fred Cockerham. The success of this grant inspired him to further study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where in 1992 he earned a Master's Degree in folklore. He studied the often overlooked area of occupational folklore as well as conventional genres of music, dance, craft, and narrative.  
In the past 30 years Bill worked as a public sector folklorist in various positions. He was a park musician and an oral historian for the National Park Service. He served as a museum curator for the North Carolina Museum of History, in Raleigh; the Mountain Heritage Center at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC; and the Museum of the Albemarle, in Elizabeth City, NC. He has also conducted several folklife surveys in eastern North Carolina, one of which resulted in Song of an Unsung Place: Living traditions by the Pamlico Sound, published by Coastal Carolina Press in 2001.

From 1994 through 1995 Bill served as folk arts specialist for the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs, and he helped present at the Florida Folk Festival.  Between 2005 and 2007 he worked with the Florida Folklife Program, researching occupational folklore of the state's agricultural traditions and cattle ranching heritage. In 2007 he accepted a position as the Folk Arts Specialist with the National Endowment for the Arts.  Currently he lives in Alexandria, VA, with his wife Lu Ann Jones.