CAN is co-hosting with Appalachians for Appalachia for this year’s Big Ideas Festival! This is a multi-day virtual event onAugust 25th, 27th, & 29th with opportunities to join in-person after parties. BIF is all about connection and celebration where communities, funders, artists, and institutions & practitioners can come together to build a shared future grounded in local wisdom, healing, and joy. This is a space open to all and held with care for meaningful exchange, creative collaboration, and strategic visioning.
LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO SUPPORT THIS EVENT
Current Afterparty Locations! Friday August 29th
6pm – networking & appetizers, cash bar, food truck will be open to buy dinner if desired.
7pm – Poetry Slam
8pm – Open Mic
9ish – Karaoke
Monday, Aug. 25th Keynote Speaker
Rethinking the Narrative: Stories That Shape Us, Stories That Free Us, 12:00-12:45pm
From ancestral memory to future-making, our stories are blueprints of belonging, healing, resistance, and transformation. This keynote explores how reimagining narratives can make space for more just, inclusive, and rooted futures, where community wisdom, lived experience, and cultural continuity become the foundation for lasting change.
Bio: Kiran Singh Sirah is an award-winning storytelling artist, folklorist, and thought leader based in Johnson City, TN. For more than two decades, he has established arts, cultural, and human rights initiatives which have received recognition from UNESCO, the White House, the United Nations, and the European Commission. He has spoken at the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, the Pentagon, the US State Department, and numerous arts assemblies. Kiran has been a creative thought leader on projects with the Smithsonian, the League of American Orchestras, Google Arts & Culture, Dollywood, the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, the American Folklore Society, South Arts, NASA, and the National Endowments for Arts & Humanities.
As the Founder and Creative Lead for Storytelling: A Gift of Hope, Kiran harnesses the art of storytelling to create intimate healing and justice spaces to build dialogue, agency, and change for communities, on their own terms. The initiative builds on decades of lived, researched, and tested approaches that leverages stories as humanity’s birthright to build a socially just present and future world. https://www.kiransinghsirah.net/
Wednesday, Aug. 27th Keynote Speakers
The American Songster Guide to Appalachian Music Appreciation, 11:20-12:50pm
Join Dom and Vania Kinard in a conversation about their music connections, research, stories, collaborations, and touring adventures throughout the Appalachian regions. Dom and Vania will share their insights on the historical Black String Band figures, contemporary connections including the Black Banjo Gathering in 2005 and 2010 along with Dom’s work with Black in Appalachia. They’ll have a deeper conversation about Appalachian black country music pioneers like Lesley Riddle, Arnold Shultz, Carl Martin, Howard Armstrong, Nathan Frazier, Frank Patterson, Jimmie Strother, and many other lesser known figures. Attendees will get to hear about some of Dom’s exciting collaborations including a once-in-a-lifetime trip to West Virginia for Yo-Yo Ma’s Project “Our Common Nature” and Tyler Childers groundbreaking album “Long Violent History”. The American Songster Guide to Appalachian Music Appreciation Keynote will take festival attendees on a journey through Dom’s music career in the region, it’ll educate anyone who wants a deeper dive into the music history, and the conversation will be sure to include all the positive experiences he had directly within the community. The Keynote will include discussions, photos, videos, and music along with a Q&A.
Bio: Dom Flemons is known as “The American Songster®” since his repertoire covers over one hundred years of American roots music. He has won a GRAMMY Award and has two-EMMY nominations. He has been inducted into the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame in the Class of 2025 and won the International Acoustic Music Award. Flemons is a folk musician, black country artist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, music scholar, historian, actor, slam poet, record collector, curator, podcaster, cultural commentator, influencer, and the creator, host, and producer of the American Songster Radio Show on WSM in Nashville, TN. He is the Co-Founder and original member of the groundbreaking Carolina Chocolate Drops, the first ever black string band to win a GRAMMY Award. Over the past 25 years, he has received major awards, gained world-wide media recognition and has become one of the most influential and highly decorated voices in American roots music. Visit theamericansongster.com and follow on social media @domflemons and @carolinachocolatedrops.
Bio: Vania Kinard is Dom Flemons wife, manager, and creative collaborator at American Songster Productions. She is a consultant, digital creator, curator, entrepreneur, photographer, producer, world traveler, and writer. Vania is a Co-Host and Producer on the American Songster Radio Show which airs on WSM. She is currently serving as the Treasurer on the Board of Directors for Folk Alliance Region Midwest (FARM). Her curatorial experience includes working with the Artistic Director at the 2020 National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada on an exhibit at the Western Folklife Center called African American Western Pioneers: Past and Present. Recently, she was the Curator of the Westward Bound: African American Country Music History & Cowboy Lore exhibit, which included a comprehensive collection of artifacts, photographs, and items that were on display at the Berkeley Public Library in 2024.Visit www.vaniakinard.com and follow on social media @vaniakinard.
Wednesday, Aug. 27th Workshops 1-3:00pm
These workshops have a limit of 20 available spaces. Signup is on a first come first serve basis. You can sign up for the workshops when you register for the event. If you have already registered, join the lobby of the zoom event and click on sessions (menu on top of page) where you can find the workshop information to reserve a spot.
Writing and Publishing Your Big Idea
Do you have a brilliant book inside you, waiting to be born? A manuscript you’re proud of but don’t know how to sell? A general curiosity about how the publishing industry works? Join me for a crash course on what it takes to write and publish a book, all the way from idea to proposal to manuscript delivery. I’ll speak from the perspective of a writer in the trenches myself, and also as an acquisitions editor who finds and secures new book projects for a publishing house, West Virginia University Press. While there will be a slight emphasis on nonfiction, most of the content of this workshop will be just as relevant for writers of fiction and poetry. The goal here is to demystify the writing and publishing processes so that your Big Idea can find its way onto the page and into the hands of readers.
Building A Community History Museum
As the museum celebrates its tenth year of operating a genuine people’s history institution, we will discuss the process of creating the museum from the grassroots, designing and maintaining the exhibits while becoming a community memory-holder, and our growing public work in the broader Southern West Virginia coalfields developing a series of collaborative historic monuments to the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain.
This is more than a quilting project. It’s a movement stitched together by everyday Appalachians reclaiming the meaning of home—square by square, story by story.
Across Eastern Kentucky, KY Tenants has been traveling to communities with fabric, thread, and a bold idea: What if we created a quilt that tells our stories while organizing for housing justice? What if we stitched together our visions for safety, belonging, and control—and used it to imagine something radically different?
In this workshop, participants create quilt squares using embroidery and heat bond appliqué, exploring their personal definitions of home while learning about Community Land Trusts (CLTs)—a powerful tool to take land out of the hands of developers and return it to the people.
“This workshop captures the methods we used, the stories we heard, and the deeper truth we’re weaving together. In a CLT: land is shared, housing is protected, and communities decide their own future.”
“Whether you’re here to make a square, learn about CLT’s or just enjoy—welcome. You will become part of the story now. Come with me and let’s build something that lasts.”
Participants can choose ONE method and will need:
Method 1 – Heat Bond Appliqué
- 1 piece of light-colored fabric (10×10 in)
- Heat bond or fabric glue
- Iron (optional)
- Scraps of fabric to cut shapes
- Pencil or chalk to outline shape
Method 2 – Embroidery
- 1 square of fabric (preferably linen or cotton)
- Embroidery hoop (or just hold fabric taut)
- Needle + embroidery thread
- Pen or pencil to trace simple text
Optional for All:
- Sharpie or fabric marker
- Printed prompt: “What does home mean to me?”