This report is in the Bush Music Club Library & deserves re-visiting.
Folklore our Living Heritage. Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Folklife in Australia. Australian Government Publishing Service, 1987
In 2018 The Conversation published an article about this report, What the folk? Whatever happened to Australia’s national folklife centre? by PhD Candidate, School of History, Australian National University
Most Australians know something about “folklore”. Every year crowds converge on Canberra for the National Folk Festival. But, folklore encompasses far more than song and dance. The term refers to a rich intangible heritage of games, yarns, legends, stories, crafts, jokes, tricks, taboos, poems, recipes, birthday customs and even graffiti.
It exists in the playground, in the kitchen, at the bar and even on the walls of the Australian War Memorial, stitched into the beautiful Changi quilts. Folklore is everywhere.
Australia has often undervalued its folklife. There was a time, however, when one government department took a special interest in the study and preservation of Australian folklore. In 1986, Barry Cohen, then Minister of Arts Heritage and Environment, commissioned a Committee of Inquiry into Folklife in Australia.
The resulting report Folklife: Our Living Heritage, was published in 1987. It concluded that despite the valiant efforts of individuals, local and community organisations, Australia was by “international standards […] poorly equipped” to ensure the protection of its folklore. Of the 51 recommendations, many depended on the success of the first: the establishment of an Australian Folklife Centre. (read on)
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Sandra Nixon
BMC Archivist, Librarian & Blogger
https://blog.bushmusic.org.au/
I’ve just been revisiting this document and I’ve often cited it in past submissions to various government bodies. In Cornstalk 176 (link below) there’s an an edited transcript of an interview recorded at the 1988 National Folk Festival by David Mulhallen with Keith McKenry, a member of the committee for the Inquiry into Folklife in Australia.
https://folkfednsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/NSWFF-Newsletter-176.pdf
Oh and BTW I’m trying to find Cornstalk Issue 145 (July “85) which I think is the first where the name Cornstalk was used. If you have any intel would be very interested.
Unfortunately Cornstalk has not survived in BMC archives – an article “CLUB LIBRARY: Selected publications available for loan to members, 1990” in Mulga Wire no.78, 1990 listed “Cornstalk Gazette 1985 – to date (now electronic), formerly NSW Folk Federation Newsletter 1970-85”
SLNSW has a collection of FF material – Folk Federation of New South Wales records, ca. 1969-1989 – https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/nGm4yxyY – 2.78 metres of textual material (10 boxes and 2 outsize boxes) –