Joey Brackner is the Director of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture, a department of the Alabama State Council on the Arts. As director, he oversees the Folklife project grants program, which supports efforts by Alabama organizations to present the state’s folk traditions as well as the Folk Arts Apprenticeship grants program supporting master folk artists who teach. In addition to making grants, the Center conducts research in order to produce the weekly Alabama Arts public radio program, an ongoing series of documentary music CDs and occasional traveling exhibitions.

 

Brackner is the author of Alabama Folk Pottery (2006) published by the University of Alabama Press. The book is a culmination of some twenty years of research on the subject.

 

Joey Brackner is a native of Fairfield, Alabama. He received a B. A. in Anthropology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1977 and a M. A. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981. He was Humanities Scholar in Residence at the Birmingham Museum of Art prior to being hired as state folklorist in 1985.