Popular interest in folklore has rarely been greater. Post-pandemic and amid hastening climate disaster, many people are turning to the ‘old ways’ to find new modes of living in harmony with nature and connecting with each other. However, the typical materials of folklore collected during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — its canon — are both partial and exclusionary. Scholars privileged rituals associated with men, side-lining women and other marginalised people, ensuring that historical inequities persist in the present day. At the same time, the gentrification of folk leaves out working-class communities who were — and continue to be — the primary originators of folk culture, while a ‘return to traditional values’ has become synonymous with extremist rhetoric. In an era of austerity, flags and the Far Right, this exhibition asks: ‘what if folklore was not just a niche interest but a potent agent for community resistance and togetherness?’
 

Lucy Wright works across visual art, performance, archiving and research, exploring folklore, feminism and social practice, informed by under-recognised, female-led traditions and her working-class upbringing in the North.
 

www.lucywright.art
@Lucy_j_wright