John C. Campbell Folk School

Founded in 1925, the John C. Campbell Folk School was created to improve the quality of life in rural communities through non-competitive learning and community life that are joyful and enlivening. Its founders drew on the model of Danish folkehojskoler, or schools for folks, emphasizing community living, small group learning, singing, dancing, and closeness to the land. People come here to immerse themselves in craft and art, music, dance, cooking, gardening, and writing, in a setting alive with fiddling, blacksmithing, singing, bread baking, and creative work inspired by nature and by the people around them. The campus includes walking trails, studios, the Rivercane Walk, and the Medicine Wheel, where artworks evoke the seven Cherokee clans, while weekly concerts and community dances help keep traditional music and dance alive. Its landscape inspires students and visitors, hands-on classes continue traditional skills such as woodcarving and blacksmithing, and in about 1930 the school’s first resident blacksmith, Oscar Cantrell, prepared the fields with two horses pulling a harrow.

North Carolina · United States