(bright music) - The Living Traditions Festival celebrates 40 years of putting the spotlight on global music, food, and crafts in downtown Salt Lake City.

Here in the studio with more on the cultural impact of this event is Dawn Borchardt.

Dawn, welcome to the show.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- What is exciting you the most about this year's celebration?

- There's so many things that I'm excited about this year.

It's our 40th anniversary, like you said, so we're really celebrating 40 years in the city, but also we are very honored to have a big collaboration with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

There's 40 festivals in the country that are having this collaboration to celebrate America 250 this year, and we are honored to be one of them.

- What does that entail?

What are some of the things that attendees will see with that collaboration?

- Yeah, so our festival really focuses on celebrating people who call Utah home and their craft and living tradition, but the Smithsonian partnership really brings in a lot of national headliners for us.

So we have headliners that are performing artists, a food demonstrator, and a craft artist this year.

- Wow, that is incredible.

What does it take, or how do you guys put all of this on?

Is it people who are working the festival as employees or do you need volunteers too?

- Yeah, we have a really dedicated team of staffers, but even more so, we have a huge fleet of volunteers that assist us, and we are still looking for volunteers.

So if people want to get involved with the festival, we'd love to have more help with that.

- Do they go through training?

What does it entail?

Do they just go online and sign up?

- Yeah, you go online to livingtraditionsfestival.com and can sign up there.

You can help with assisting our craft artist workshops.

You can work backstage for the performing artists.

You can work in our kids area.

There's all sorts of options to do.

- Wow, what does 40 years mean to you of having this festival?

- Yeah, I think it's important to me because, and our community, 'cause I think it's showing us that there's actually a lot of different people and cultures that call Utah home and it brings them all together.

You can learn about yourself and your own history, but your neighbors as well.

- All right, well, thank you so much for being here.

If you would like to learn more information about the Living Traditions Festival, the website's right there on your screen.

The festival, 40th anniversary, running May 15th through the 17th.

I'm Liz Adeola, and thank you for watching "Contact."

(bright music) Philanthropy, Arts, culture.

It's what brings us together.

Hi, I'm Liz Adeola, the host of Contact, a show that connects you with local events and organizations that serve your community.

If you work for a nonprofit and would like to be on Contact, please visit pbs.org/contact