Who is Folkvoice?

Illustration by Sandra Mizumoto Posey

We wanted to continue the Comics for a Better World series I designed and Cricket had been involved in and hoped eventually the organization would be fiscally viable enough to provide new graduates (with little relevant work experience) an opportunity to build up their resume — including Cricket’s. At the time Cricket trying to get into the very competitive world of folklore grad school. So with that in mind, I got the idea for the nonprofit and paid Cricket out of pocket to get it started, It worked!

Cricket got in a very good program, with funding, but this outcome also meant that because we hadn’t been running the non-profit long enough to raise enough to hire someone to take Cricket’s place. We were in Denver. Cricket’s new grad program was in Oregon. My monetary situation also shifted and I had neither time to give nor money to keep it going. We reluctantly decided it wouldn’t be possible to continue the nonprofit especially given there was a minimum we had to raise annually to be a project of the CNDC. What money we had raised we donated to the Western States Folklore Society

But I kept the domain.

I had vague hopes that we continue as some sort of community organization iif not an actual nonprofit but I didn’t really know what that would look like. In the meantime the Kintsugi project, started on a whim, was producing amazing responses from students. Funding for the Comics for a Better World series kept coming, in small but consistent chunks. I thought about a site solely to showcase Kintsugi but (with my Japanese mother rolling in her grave) bought domains late at night with incorrect spelling. Aargh. Then I remembered Folkvoice. I could put up some of the comics, and some examples of student responses to Kintsugi (with permission of course). My current teaching assistant Kiki had designed a personal altar assignment for another class, and, she pointed out, she was a ceramics artist — something that aligned with the Kintsugi theme. And so the new iteration of Folkvoice emerged. It will grow and evolve but no doubt in unpredictable ways. Each of the four sectiions are run by myself or Kiki, with each of us having free reign as to what they will include. These sections are, in a sense, our own virtual altar or intentional space, a place to gather what is meaningful to us and share it without any pressure to produce a certain amount on a set calendar. These are our spaces of respite and nourishment

In it’s various iterations, Folkvoice has been supported by board members such as Deeksha Nagar, Mikkilynn Olmstead, and Bridgette Coble as well as community members like Iaan Baker who designed the original version of the website – and lots of students who interviewed and drew people or were interviewed for The Comics for a Betteer World Series. The most current team includes Quincy Alcaraz, Ash Blondo, Aaron Avila, JC, Sequoia M. and Jordyn DeStefano. These newest comics in the series will be complemented by an essay by Dr. Kristen Lyons based on a campus survey she conducted. Many more have been involved in contributing work and their stories, some of which will be shared on the site.

While most participants in these projects and this site are affiliated with MSU Denver in some way, they do not represent the views or positions of the Institution. Nonetheless, we are grateful that through classes and grant funding they made much of this possible