The Michigan Traditional Arts Program is administratively housed in MSU's Residential College in the Arts and Humanities and is the statewide public folklife, traditional arts, and everyday culture service organization of Michigan. Since 1985, MTAP has documented, funded, presented, and supported folk and traditional arts across the state. Program archives and three dimensional collections are housed in the MSU Museum’s Folklife Research Collection and digital humanities projects are based in MATRIX: The Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences. Throughout the over 40 years of the program, MTAP has built an extensive network of artist partners and community collaborators who have together undertaken a wide variety of reciprocal and community-led projects. These include publications, exhibitions, collections development and archival support, ethnographic fieldwork, artist presentations, festivals, narrative stages, and networking assistance. Many participants in our two flagship program, the Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and the Michigan Heritage Awards, have been involved since the early days of the program and continue to maintain close relationships with MTAP staff.

Traditional Arts in Michigan Visioning Sessions are hosted on Zoom and planned facilitating artists and organizers who have a long relationship with MTAP, with administrative support from MTAP public programs coordinator Micah Ling. Each session is planned and executed by the session facilitator and Micah Ling, meeting together to brainstorm a list of participants and draft text to send to these participants. They last between 1-2 hours depending on the flow of the discussion and availability of participants. Most of the artists involved have previously participated in the Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, received a Michigan Heritage Award, or presented at the former Great Lakes Folk Festival (1999-2017) that was organized by MTAP staff in collaboration with the MSU Museum. Those who have not were selected by the facilitators because of their strong community connections and ties within the community of practice represented within the visioning session.

The purpose of the sessions is to connect with past awardees in the apprenticeship and heritage award programs to assess the impacts of those programs, to better understand the needs of our collaborators and their communities of practice, and to have time and space to commune together to envision future projects. The six sessions reflect six traditions or regions who have participated in MTAP programs extensively: fiddle, traditional dance (various forms), quillwork, basket making, Upper Peninsula folklife, and metro Detroit folklife. The artist participants share ideas about future projects or ways their communities could be better supported be either MTAP, MSU, or arts administrators in the state in general. It is the goal that MTAP will continue to work with artists on the ideas presented to strengthen these ties and provide administrative support if artists would like assistance preparing applications for targeted funding from outside our organization.