Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
After John died in 1919, Olive joined with colleague Marguerite Butler and the tiny com-
munity of Brasstown that said, Heck, yes, we'll help you start a school. Locals donated land,
labor, and hard-earned cash.
Modeled after Danish folk schools (Olive and Marguerite spent the summer of 1922 vis-
iting these “schools for life”), the John C. Campbell Folk School has always had one mis-
sion: to use the performing arts, agriculture, and crafts of Appalachia to develop students'
inner growth as creative, thoughtful individuals and their social development as tolerant,
caring members of a community. Only now, instead of “outsiders” educating the local moun-
tain people, the locals are educating the outsiders who literally come from around the
world. Instructors teach them to build furniture, make banjos, throw pots, and piece together
quilts—and the list goes on. There are classes in dyeing, enameling, making kaleidoscopes,
knitting, working leather, playing the dulcimer, you name it.
Offered year-round, the weeklong courses, which run Sunday through Saturday morning,
include three family-style meals per day (complete with the school's signature homemade
bread), early morning group walks through the woods, and a daily pre-breakfast songfest that
invites everyone (even those with nary a note in their repertoire) to join together in harmony.
MorningSong, as it's called, is an important part of the communal experience.
AT THE MOVIES
Although the movie Songcatcher tells the story of a university doctor named Lily
Penleric who comes to Appalachia to wheedle, befriend, and pester the local people
into sharing their ancient Scots-Irish ballads, it was loosely based on Olive Camp-
bell, one of two New England women who started the folk school on the western-
most edge of North Carolina.
Before director Maggie Greenwald wrote the movie, she spent two weeks in
North Carolina going through Olive's letters and ballad collections. Greenwald had
already read Olive's 1917 book, English Folks Songs from the Southern Appalachi-
ans, which she wrote after compiling the ballads she heard while traveling around
Appalachia with her husband, John. Back in 1908 and 1909, when the Campbells
were visiting the front porches and barns of Appalachian families, Olive notated the
local ballads that had changed little in the four or five generations since European
settlers carried music into the mountains.
A documentary with the real story of Olive Campbell and the folk school she
started is being produced by North Carolina Public Television.
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