Creating and cultivating opportunities for cultural connections that support living traditions and energize vibrant communities.
We are creating a more empathetic world—where people respect and celebrate one another’s cultural expressions—through the sharing of traditional arts, customs, and lore that promote cultural exchange, understanding, and honor artistic mastery.
The Center for Cultural Vibrancy (CCV) creates and cultivates opportunities for cultural connections that support living traditions and energize vibrant communities.
We are creating a more empathetic world—where people respect and celebrate one another’s cultural expressions—through the sharing of traditional arts, customs, and lore that promote cultural exchange, understanding, and honor artistic mastery.
We believe that traditional arts and culture present the best of ourselves—providing a uniquely powerful vehicle for cultural diplomacy and engendering lasting cross-cultural respect and appreciation.
Updates from CCV
See the latest news and updates from CCV, artists, and more.
Remembering Elder Frank Newsome
Photo by Tom Pich. The news of the passing of Elder Frank Newsome, beloved preacher of the Little David Old Regular Baptist Church located deep in the Virginia coalfields along…
Announcing the Center for Cultural Vibrancy Stage Artists at the 2026 Richmond Folk Festival
The Center for Cultural Vibrancy Stage returns to the Allianz Amphitheater with a weekend celebrating remarkable musical traditions, creative energy and cultural connections from Virginia and beyond. This year’s lineup…
Cultural Programs
CCV produces and provides resources to support programming that brings together tradition-bearers and master practitioners of the traditional arts—musicians, craftspeople, dancers, cooks, and storytellers—from richly diverse cultural communities across the globe. These programs enable artists and tradition bearers to share their deeply cherished crafts and to explore the continuities within differences, making the “strange” familiar, and moving us all beyond a dichotomy of “us” and “them.”
Cultural Exchange
Creating dynamic, engaging public programs to transcend the cultural barriers that divide people, CCV strongly values traditional knowledge and artistic expression, cross-cultural sharing and exchange, and diversity and inclusion.
Vibrancy
Creating dynamic, engaging public programs to transcend the cultural barriers that divide people, CCV strongly values traditional knowledge and artistic expression, cross-cultural sharing and exchange, and diversity and inclusion.
Ethiopian dance group Fendika visits students from their cultural center in Addis Ababa.
World Culture in Context
World Culture in Context takes students on a virtual field trip by connecting them with renowned performing artists and community tradition-bearers from across the globe. Through this dynamic program, students experience participating artists in the places that have profoundly shaped their work.
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