On a daily basis, traditional people around the world face pressure to adopt mass culture. With advertising budgets to back them up, commercial interests market to the world. But this doesn't have to be. More and more people are recognizing the threat to traditional culture and they are making efforts to support and encourage it. Cultural conservation is a relatively new term that refers to the efforts of organizations and individuals to continue dancing, drumming, singing, and living as they wish.
Cultural conservation is a form of cultural intervention, of interference in a culture by outsiders.
But if the intervention is careful and thoughtful, it can help people within the culture to turn intervention into self-determination. Sometimes, a culture may need no more than encouragement that comes from mere recognition. But ultimately, we must provide each culture with the appropriate and specific tools necessary to present or support itself. Louisiana supports traditional culture through the Louisiana Folklife Program within the Division of the Arts which has as its goal the identification, documentation, conservation, and presentation of all aspects of folk cultures in Louisiana. Louisiana's traditional culture is supported through folklife surveys, exhibits, recordings, in-school activities, and festivals funded through the Division of the Arts grants program.