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A steady breeze flows through John C. Campbell’s festival barn in Brasstown, North Carolina — drying paint, catching a rainbow of basket weaving threads in the wind, and most importantly, cooling all those who craft under its high beams.
It is the second day of the famed Folk School’s Little Middle, a week-long summer camp for children aged seven to 17 in the North Carolina mountains, and the young artists are busy weaving, hammering, tie-dying, and papier-mâchéing, among many other activities.
Under the roof of this open air barn are the ‘littles,’ around 125 of the rising second graders to rising sixth graders participating in this year’s camp. Alongside the students are volunteer instructors, most of whom return year after year to share their talents and time with campers.
Shari Shifrin and Beverly Bishop have been friends for over a decade. Their children attended the camp and have now graduated, but the women keep coming back to teach together.
At their “Recycled Art: Critters & Crafts” class, campers hammer away — mesmerized by a wood block, a nail, and pan of bottle caps. It’s the type of work that can put an artist in a meditative state, doing the same thing repetitively until the work is complete.
Today’s craft will be a shape-shifting snake, with the bottle caps as the slithering body, and tomorrow will be a scrap fabric constructed bird cage. Bishop comes up from Florida for camp, while Shifrin lives just a little bit east of the Folk School.
This is Shifrin’s 17th year teaching at the camp. She was an art educator in north Georgia and now lives in Whittier, North Carolina. The first time Shifrin brought her daughter to Little Middle, before the week was over, her daughter asked to come back every summer. It became their annual vacation, driving north to Brasstown to join in a week’s worth of traditional Appalachian culture and hands-on making at the John C. Campbell Folk School.
The history of a Folk School
It is hard to pin down exactly when Little Middle as a program began. Anthony Perrone, marketing and communications director at John C. Campbell Folk School, said he has friends who participated 40 years ago. Walking around campus with Perrone, we heard story after story of students who wouldn’t dare miss a summer.
The Folk School itself will be celebrating its 100th year in 2025. Born out of a Danish tradition of a folkehøjskole, or a “school for life” in rural Denmark, Campbell and his wife Olive dreamed of creating one in the south. Olive traveled to Europe after John’s passing in 1919 with Marguerite Butler to study such schools and see if they could be replicated in Appalachia.
The school settled in Brasstown thanks to a local storekeeper who gave his land for the campus and 200 locals who vowed to support the idea. The land and program offerings have grown over time, but the year-round, traditional art opportunities have remained.
While the younger students of Little Middle craft in the festival barn, older campers are using every classroom the facility has to offer. Students step on floor looms at the Louise Pitman Fiber Arts building or learn to play one of the region’s most traditional instruments, the Appalachian dulicmer. At the Clay Spencer Blacksmith Shop, students light a coal forge, heat their metals, and hammer to create pieces of a wind chime.
The roughly 100 “middles” attending camp have the option to stay overnight at the school’s cabins. Registration opens in March, and Little Middle usually fills up within a day. This year, thanks to an art educator in Murphy, and a burgeoning relationship between the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) and the Folk School, 20 students from Cherokee and Clay counties were able to attend Little Middle at no cost.
Artist Innovation Mentorship in Western N.C.
Wendy Alexander, theater and art educator in Cherokee County Schools, is constantly in awe of her students’ talent. Visiting the Cherokee School of Innovation during a dress rehearsal, Alexander is quick to point out their accolades.
It is one of these students and their drawings that led Alexander to contact the NCMA.
“I was like, somebody needs to see her work because it’s incredible,” said Alexander of her student Anna Claire Lachance.
In reaching out to the NCMA, Alexander was connected with Angela Lombardi, director of outreach and audience engagement at the museum. Lombardi runs Artist Innovation Mentorship (AIM), a six-week after-school program that brings local artists to students in rural North Carolina. NCMA supports financially with art supplies and snacks for the students, and the artist works with the local art educator to increase opportunities for students.
This connection from Alexander to Lombardi resulted in three AIM experiences for Cherokee County students in the fall of 2023 and spring of 2024. John C. Campbell Folk School supplied the artist for the program and the location — at Olive’s Porch in Murphy. Alexander describes the relationship with Lombardi from the NCMA as “phenomenal.”
AIM was such a success that the conversation continued, which led to the creation of local scholarships for Little Middle. Perrone was influential in establishing this continued support for regional students and credits the AIM program for opening the door to that opportunity.
In the Exploring Pastels class, one camper volunteers to show his work. He explains the use of shape and color in his piece, saying he loves sketching reptiles in particular. When asked if he thinks of himself as an artist, a smirk forms across his face, and he says, “yes.”
John C. Campbell Folk School has been supporting and creating artists for almost 100 years, and thanks to Little Middle, the strong tradition continues.
