Connecting Kentucky through music: Local Honeys and Louisville Folk School // Intercultural Microgrant Guest Blog
The following guest blog is from 2024 Intercultural Microgrant recipients Louisville Folk School and The Local Honeys, who received support through our Artist-led Projects Generating Economic Impact in Eastern KY fund. Learn more about this project at kyrux.org/microgrants/2024.
On Friday, December 13, 2024, Louisville Folk School, in partnership with the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX), brought The Local Honeys to perform at Kenwood Elementary in South Louisville and later at the Santa Is Real Holiday Fundraiser Concert at The Whirling Tiger.
The Local Honeys onstage at The Whirling Tiger. Photo by Nathan Cornetet/Fusion Photography for LFS.
This project is part of Louisville Folk School’s Folk Artist in Residence series, which brings international and regional touring artists from a wide variety of folk traditions into Louisville elementary schools and public-facing concerts. This collaboration with RUX aims to bridge Kentucky’s rural and urban communities through interactive performances and storytelling to celebrate music and shared cultural heritage.
The Local Honeys — Montana Hobbs and Linda Jean Stokley — are known for preserving and redefining Kentucky’s Appalachian music traditions, bringing their songs of place, struggle, and resilience to audiences of all ages. Their presence in both an in-school setting and a public concert created a space where Kentucky’s musical past and present came alive, fostering connections across generations and geographies.
At Kenwood Elementary, 200 students were introduced to real, living Appalachian music, experiencing firsthand the power of storytelling through song. The Local Honeys performed a mix of traditional ballads and original compositions, sharing stories about their music and answering students' questions about their instruments and songwriting. These moments provided a glimpse into the deep-rooted musical traditions of rural Kentucky, bringing a piece of Appalachia into an urban Louisville classroom.
Above & below: The Local Honeys perform at Kenwood Elementary. Photos by Dave Howard for LFS.
Later that night, The Local Honeys performed at The Whirling Tiger as part of Santa Is Real, Louisville Folk School’s annual holiday fundraiser. Sharing the stage with Hubby Jenkins, Jesse Wells, Julia Purcell & Isaac Fosl-van Wyke, Kathryn Brooks, and the Mountain Folk Choir, they showcased how Kentucky’s folk traditions are not static but evolving, collaborative, and deeply relevant today. This event brought together people from across Kentucky—musicians, students, and community members—all united by a love for storytelling through song.
Above: Photos of The Local Honeys at The Whirling Tiger by Nathan Cornetet/Fusion Photography for LFS.
By combining an in-school educational performance with a public community event, this project successfully connected Kentucky’s rural and urban voices through music.
At Kenwood Elementary, many students who had never heard live Appalachian music before were introduced to Kentucky’s folk traditions, making meaningful connections between music, history, and their own cultural identities.
At The Whirling Tiger, a diverse audience—musicians, music lovers, and supporters of folk traditions—came together to celebrate a living, breathing Appalachian music scene, demonstrating that Kentucky’s cultural heritage is shared, celebrated, and still evolving.
This experience highlighted the importance of keeping folk traditions alive in both rural and urban spaces, and the role that organizations like Louisville Folk School and RUX play in fostering these connections.
This project embodies what Rural Urban Exchange (RUX) is all about:
Bridging geographic and cultural divides between Kentucky’s rural and urban communities
Celebrating and preserving folk traditions in ways that feel relevant today
Creating spaces for collaboration and dialogue across different backgrounds
The Local Honeys embody both preservation and innovation in Appalachian music. By bringing them into a classroom in South Louisville and a concert venue in downtown Louisville, we demonstrated that Kentucky’s cultural heritage is not just something to be remembered—it is something to be lived, shared, and built upon.
This project proves that music can be a bridge—a tool for connection, conversation, and community—across Kentucky’s diverse landscapes.
—Louisville Folk School & The Local Honeys
The Kentucky Intercultural Microgrant Program is a seed grant to support two or more individuals or organizations collaborating across distance, difference, or sector on projects that celebrate and connect Kentucky's people and places.
Launched with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, Kentucky Waterways Alliance, Fund for the Arts, the Monument Workshop at UK, the Josh May Memorial Fund, and individual donors, the 2024 Microgrant Program invests in a series of seed grants (awards from $250-2000) to support short-term projects that foster dialogue, connection, or collaboration among Kentuckians from disparate backgrounds, identities, or experiences. Projects that involve diverse partners and invite the public to participate are preferred.