Birmingham Folk Festival
Statement on the Use of Artificial Intelligence
Commitment
A line is currently being drawn between art and not art, authenticity and artifice, being and not being, and The Birmingham Folk Festival (BFF) actively chooses the side of humanity – art, authenticity, and being. Effective Feb 19th, 2026, BFF evokes an AI No Admittance policy for vendors and performers that use AI in products, art, music, or written word. We include in this scope the operations and materials produced by BFF ourselves, and commit to hosting an AI-free event, where the human spirit of both creativity and connection is prioritized and protected.
Justification
In addition to our growing understanding of increasingly devastating and unjust environmental effects, in our cultural moment, an exchange has been offered to us that in its bargaining asks for the flattening of humanity and the loss of one of America’s greatest values and virtues – individuality. With the use of AI, the artist, who should reflect to us the soul of humanity, no longer uses technology, tools, and mediums as extensions of her will, but rather the artist becomes the extension, a mere operator of a machine reflecting only an advertisement of humanity and of art. In one fell swoop, the artist and her will is captured and sold back to us in another form altogether.
We recognize that artist-as-operator is only representative of a transitional moment in society, lasting, at most, one generation. If we allow artists (and we believe we are all artists) to take this temporary role offered to us, we lose unique and profound powers given to us by birth, and will watch as our children become a chain of conveyance for this consumptive form of marketing that reflects merely an illusion of humanity, in a digital drift, where the individual may no longer have authority nor even the knowledge necessary to chart its own course.
By refusing art and artists who are electing to become these operators in a transition toward human replacement, BFF is acting to preserve the transmission of memory and imagination for what art has always been, is, and is yet to be, and therefore what humanity has always been, is, and is yet to become. Birmingham is beautiful not because of its industry, but because of its people. We guarantee that Birmingham culture and life is what will guide and be displayed at this festival now and always.
CuAPTCHA (Completely un-Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) and Conclusion
This message was originally drafted on the back of a page of a child’s scribbles - which contains more beauty, more potential, and more power than any version, now or ever, of AI. So accessible is this simple truth, and so fundamental is it a principle of reality, and yet seemingly so close at hand is our inability to discern it. Go make something, and do it without AI! We need what only you have to offer!