ABOUT MARION VOICES:
Founded in 2017, Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History — operating from 2017 to 2025 — was Marion County, Ohio’s countywide folklife, cultural arts, & public history non-profit: working to collaboratively amplify North Central Ohio’s diverse cultural heritages, nourishing arts & culture-based livelihoods, & growing more just, more abundant futures for everyone. Our work happened in three interconnected realms: (1) building solidarities across lines of difference by connecting North-Central Ohio communities; (b) nurturing expanded arts-based & creative sector economies to make sure our region is one where our culture-keepers & artists can not just survive, but thrive, & (c) cultivating reparative, critical pride-in-place in North-Central Ohio: the kind that doesn’t look away from the hard stuff, but builds from that to cultivate collective futures that are amazing, healing, & beautiful … for everyone!
ABOUT MARION COUNTY, OHIO:
Founded in 1820, Marion County is a diverse and changing North-Central Ohio community standing at the crossroads of post-industrial, agricultural, & cultural experience. Situated in the North-Central Ohio region roughly halfway between Lima & Mansfield, Marion County is a largely rural county with seven incorporated villages — LaRue, New Bloomington, Green Camp, Prospect, Waldo, & Morral — & several additional census-designated places. While majority white, Marion County is home to a significant & historic African-American community, as well as a destination for a thriving immigrant & newcomer community: including many more recent immigrants from Central & South America, from countries including México, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Puerto Rico, & more.
HISTORY
Marion Voices‘ began when its co-founders, Johnnie Jackson & Jess Lamar Reece Holler, met serendipitously at a protest in Columbus. We started life as a program of the Marion County Historical Society; & grew into our own non-profit structure in 2021! Today, we serve all of Marion County. In Summer 2024, we’re excited to begin expanding our collaborations to include a broader thirteen-county region of North-Central Ohio: working to amplify, organize, & network arts, culture, & heritage organizations across our bigger region!
Marion Voices‘ core programs included community co-curated exhibits, events, an annual countywide folk + cultural arts survey, our Marion Voices Culture Keepers Artists’ Roster, a folk arts apprenticeship program, our signature Marion Black Joy Summerfest (held each June at MLK Park in Marion), & our beloved Marion Voices in the Schools K-12 Folklife + Cultural Arts Residency program: which trains community cultural & documentary artists as paid teaching artists in Marion County schools. We also offered workshops, training in oral history & folklife methods & documentary arts, historic preservation research & advocacy, & produce publications, audio documentaries, & more.
We always said the “how” of what we do mattersedeven more than the “what.” Across all of our programs, we held three core praxes sacred: (1) community co-curation — creating not for, but by and with impacted communities; (2) equity budgeting — paying everyone we work with, from cultural liaisons & translators to oral history narrators to performing, presenting, & teaching artists, & (3) emergent design (inspired by the emergent strategy practice of adrienne maree brown): adaptively & nimbly adjusting our project foci & program design to meet real, current community need.
We’re grateful for everyone who joined us across our epic, exhausting eight year run! Almost every Marion Voices program had an opportunity for community co-curation, involvement, & participation: which always, per our equity budgeting model, came with a stipend! Arts & culture work is labor, & deserves to be remunerated as such! Thank you for supporting Marion Voices in building liveable, vibrant regional arts & culture economies for all!
Marion Voices dissolved by vote of its Board of Directors in late 2025, following devastating losses in the federal & state arts & culture funding landscape, and broad attacks on DEI- & justice-focused work.
