ABSTRACT
Rural life museums are constructed around ways of countryside life and formed from collections of relevant architecture and local artefacts. Scotland, Wales and Ireland all had established national museums concentrating largely on rural life by the late 1940s, the most ambitious of which was St Fagan's, founded in 1948, which became the Museum of Welsh Life. The exhibition of folk art at Tate Britain in 2014 attempted to address the status of what was perceived as a neglected area of artistic practice and draw it into the mainstream, into the prime national gallery for British art. The creation and survival of folk culture is at the most fluid and creative end of the heritage world. Folk culture, meaning literally the beliefs and customs of the people, is not exclusively rural, of course, but has always straddled rural and urban society.
