Filmmakers

Jon Lohman is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Cultural Vibrancy. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina and holds an M.A. in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. From 2001 until 2020 Jon was the director of Virginia’s state Folklife Program where he initiated and carried out numerous programs, including an award-winning Folklife Apprenticeship Program and the correspond book In Good Keeping, which chronicles the first five years of the Apprenticeship Program. He also produced numerous documentary materials, including films such as The Buckingham Lining Bar Gang and Put me Down Easy: the Charlie McClendon Story. His audio recordings’ portfolio is rich and includes albums such as The Sherman Holmes Project’s The Richmond Sessions, The Legendary Ingramettes’ Take A Look in the Book, and more than a dozen records in bluegrass, old-time, and gospel in the Crooked Road Music Series of Virginia’s Music Heritage Trail. Jon has presented and served on curatorial committees for numerous local and national festivals, including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the Richmond Folk Festival, Merlefest, Floydfest, the Lowell Folk Festival, the American Folk Festival, and the National Folk Festival. Jon has presented his work and collaborated with the Smithsonian, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, the State Department, and numerous cultural organizations and festivals throughout Virginia and the country. Jon taught courses on folklife, oral history, and cultural sustainability at the University of Pennsylvania and Mary Washington and Goucher Colleges. In 1991, he was a Corps Member of Teach for America, assigned as a fifth-grade teacher at Harriet Tubman Elementary School in New Orleans.