Folk Media Conference and Festival | Oct. 9-11
On the week of October 9-11, the Creative Digital Media Department (CDM) hosted the Folk Media Conference and Festival. This festival focused on digital media and art through the lens of “folklore.”
Through workshops, performances, exhibitions, and presentations, students and other attendants were able to explore the creation of media by everyday people through urban legends, memes, zines, DIY media, play, underground music, fandom, found media, and other forms of expression. In collaboration with the WSU CDM Department, there were performances by Dameun Strange, the resident artist at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, presentations by digital artist and scholar Anna Nacher, and more performances and workshops with Slam Academy founder James Patrick, as well as a concert and workshops with Dante DeGrazia.
Additionally, the CDM Department showcased an exhibit of “Folk Media in the Digital Age,” which claims that “folk media, the oral tales, the handmade image, the communal song, ritual object, have not vanished in the age of digital spectacle. Instead, it transforms, disperses, and multiplies with digital networks. If folk media once traveled the footpaths and village squares, today it travels by internet and screens, but its core impulse remains: to tell, to bind, to remember, and to provoke” (Heckman 2026).
For information about the Creative Digital Media (CDM) program at Winona State, contact Davin Heckman at dheckman@winona.edu.
Funding for this newsletter and Arts and Letters social media posts provided by the WSU Foundation.
