Dr Jon Lohman | Local Legends #75

On this week's episode of Local Legends Martin chats Virginia, folklore, and cultural exchange with Dr Jon Lohman.

For two decades Jon worked as the State Folklorist of Virginia, has a PhD in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, and has enjoyed a distinguished career bridging community activism, arts education, and public media.

In addition to working for many years to document, sustain, and celebrate grassroots cultural traditions in Virginia, in 2002 he launched the state’s highly successful Folklife Apprenticeship Program which supports master artists in passing down essential traditions and aspects of cultural heritage across the state.

He has served on curatorial committees and presented at major national events, including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, America’s National Folk Festival, and the Richmond Folk Festival, also running, through the Centre for Cultural Vibrancy, the innovative schools-based virtual arts programme "World Culture in Context" which connects a diverse range of national and international artists with classrooms, fostering community, empathy, and cultural understanding.

Jon has also produced numerous traditional albums and contributed to documentary films, in addition to which the Centre for Cultural vibrancy facilitates border-free collaborations that bring diverse communities together to explore shared heritage. This includes deep-dive fieldwork, major public events, and the support and celebration of a broad range of traditional artists, from musicians to craftspeople to dancers and beyond.

Learn more about his current work here: https://culturalvibrancy.org/

About Three Ravens 🔮

Three Ravens is a completely independent English myth and folklore podcast where we share stories, celebrate folk culture, and fall backwards through the hedgerows of history.

Hosted by real-life couple Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux, and mostly recorded at our home in rural Sussex in southern England, Three Ravens is rated 4.8/5 from over 500 reviews and has grown by word of mouth care of our lovely listener community ‘The Conspiracy of Ravens.’

We release three episodes a week, on Mondays, Thursday and Saturdays, through which we explore folktales, folkways, fairy stories, folk songs, mythology, local heritage, seasonal customs and traditional beliefs.

Our research inspires our retellings of stories from across history and culture, with episodes standing alone but connected together across over 500 chatty, mostly light-hearted, swear-free installments driven by passion, kindness and curiosity.

Now ranked as an all-time Top 5 podcast across several categories by Goodpods, charting in the Spotify, Apple and Rephonic UK Fiction Top 10 across 2024, 2025 and 2026, if you’re interested in ghosts, monsters, regional beliefs, and the things that unite us all, then join us round the campfire and listen in…