- FAI 2025
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Scholarship Funds
Scholarship funds to community members attend our conference.
Clark & Elaine Weissman Scholarship for First Time Conference Attendees
Named after FAI’s founding members, our First-Time Conference Attendee scholarships offset the conference registration costs of over 100 artists and industry professionals.
Mike Seeger Scholarship for Traditional Artists
Mike Seeger was a legendary traditional music teacher and performer who worked tirelessly to keep people connected with the roots of folk music throughout North America. Among many other accomplishments, Mike was a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers and recipient of a 2004 Folk Alliance International Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Mike Seeger Traditional Fellowship (MSTF) brings tradition bearers (elders and younger practitioners who live in and share their cultural traditions) and exposes these master musicians to the folk music community at-large. They must be actively participating in their art form as practitioners, mentors, or both. Mike Seeger Traditional Fellows demonstrate significant contributions to living traditional arts, their source communities, or the transmission of traditional knowledge to future generations.
One Mike Seeger Traditional Fellow will be selected each year before the annual conference by an anonymous committee of experts in traditional music.
The fellow will receive a conference registration for the next upcoming conference, a travel stipend to cover their travel and lodging expenses, and a featured session in the conference’s daytime programming to demonstrate or teach their traditional practice.
Gene Shay Scholarship for Emerging Folk DJ’s
Gene Shay is frequently referred to as the “Dean of Folk DJs.” His career spanned more than five decades on six different radio stations in the Philadelphia market, most recently at WXPN, where he did his final Sunday night folk show on February 1, 2015. Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Phil Ochs, and Tom Waits are just a few of the artists he interviewed early in their careers, a tradition that he continued with the best artists until his retirement.
He was present at the creation of Folk Alliance International, and he was given FAI’s first Folk DJ lifetime achievement award. Above all, he has been a friend and mentor to countless artists and DJs.
In his honor, the Gene Shay Scholarship has been established to send a Folk DJ for the first time to the Folk Alliance International conference. The award will include complimentary registration courtesy of FAI, plus hotel accommodations and at least a portion of travel costs. This award is managed by a coalition of current folk DJ’s.
Indigenous Scholarship
As a part of FAI’s commitment to serving Indigenous communities, the Indigenous Scholarship covers expenses of Indigenous performers in order to remove barriers from their ability to participate in the annual conference. Folk Alliance International donates the full cost of a registration to this fund and the remaining funding is used for travel and hotel expenses of the performer.
This fund is administered by Indigenous leaders within FAI’s membership.
Folk Chart Fund
FAI actively manages the FAI Folk Charts in order to quantify the impact of the work of radio programmers and give artists a way of tracking their reach and influence.
The intent of these charts is to ensure the development of a broader network of folk music listeners, brokers, supporters, and fans and creating a stronger feedback mechanism to support artists and managers in strategic tour and marketing planning.
Your donation goes directly to the costs to administer the charts.
