A Few of Our Industry Partners

Performing Arts Alliance Global Music Match Kansas City Folk Festival

Launched in 2017, the Kansas City Folk Festival started as a small indoor festival held in conjunction with our annual conference as a way to bring folk acts from around the globe to the public right in our hometown of Kansas City. The festival has since grown and shifted to a now community-led, independent non-profit organization produced by friends in our community. We’re proud of the work we’ve done to get the festival off the ground and are excited to see future iterations of the event as the community takes on full control of its vision and planning.

In 2020, FAI was formally invited to be a member of the Performing Arts Alliance, which is a group that advocates for America’s professional nonprofit arts sector before Congress and key policy makers. Other members include theater, dance, opera, chorus organizations, and more. This partnership is key in participating in the national conversation of preserving the arts, while also elevating the folk music industry as a performing art that’s essential to the cultural sector. Our partnership with Global Music Match continued last year with the second edition of the world’s largest online music collaboration. In 2021, the artists participating in the program who represented the United States were Treya Lam, Max ZT (pictured above), Lilli Lewis, Julia Othmer, Thea Hopkins, HuDost, and Windborne. We’re excited to continue working with Sounds Australia, Showcase Scotland Expo, and Canada’s East Coast Music Association (ECMA) on the 2022 Global Music Match program this fall.