FOLKLORE: Folklore reveals and helps us understand our humanity. Communities throughout time and space have created stories, songs, dance, music, rituals, customs, festivals, and various material artistic genres (a small sampling of what folklorists study) to make sense of and to celebrate the world and the human condition. Our expressions flourish when tradition connects communal wisdom with innovative inspiration. As its name indicates, folklore involves both "folk" (a group of people) and "lore" (creative expressions). Hence folklorists study "artistic communication in small groups" (Ben-Amos 1972) or "creativity in its own context" (Glassie 1999) - see folklore definitions link below. As an academic discipline folklore shares concerns, methods, and insights with literature, anthropology, art, music, history, linguistics, philosophy, and mythology. The unique contribution of folklore is to strive to focus on systems of  interrelationships between people and their artistic productions -- we consider both the folk and the lore and how they influence each other. Most contemporary folklore study involves fieldwork, often in local communities.