This presentation examines the role of folklore within my contemporary fine art practice through the framework of William R. Bascom’s Four Functions of Folklore—amusement, cultural validation, education, and the maintenance of social norms (Bascom, 1965). Using this structure as a critical lens, I consider how folkloric practices operate within socially engaged art not as nostalgic reference, but as an active and evolving cultural system.

Situated within the small world of The Parish of Milk, my performative and textile-based practice draws upon rural community participation, seasonal cycles, and place-based inquiry. Responding to a growing disconnect between young people and seasonal awareness, the work reactivates ritual as a means of ecological and cultural re-ettunement, through humour, costume, and storytelling.

Particular attention is given to the Frolicksome Frock rituals and the carnivalesque, informed by Mikhail Bakhtin’s theorisation of carnival (Bakhtin, 1984), alongside the archetypes of the fool and trickster. These figures destabilise hierarchy, invite collective play, and enable reflection through laughter, resonating with ritual processes of liminality and communitas. Addressing tensions between preservation and transformation, the presentation argues that folklore - including superstition, oral tradition, and ritual repetition - offers a dynamic methodological framework through which contemporary art can sustain inherited practices while contributing to their reconfiguration. In doing so, it proposes folklore as a living system through which communal wellbeing and seasonal awareness can be rehearsed in response to ecological and cultural change.

Bascom, William R. (1984) ‘The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives’. The Journal of American Folklore, 78(307), pp. 3–20.

Bakhtin, Mikhail (1965) Rabelais and His World. Indiana University Press.