The following text is adapted from EFS Executive Director Lucy Soderstrom's Tuesday Group presentation from February 4, 2025. Should you prefer listening to reading, a link to the recording of the Tuesday Group is available.
You might see the title of this presentation - To Be a Folk School - and think you have a good handle on that - I wouldn’t say you’re wrong! I see you all in front of me - many of you have been to a class - or many classes - at EFS and many of you attend our events, like the Spring Bonfire or Thanksgiving Potluck. Fear not - I hope to be able to share with you all much that you may not be aware of. Beyond the Ely Folk School and the North House Folk School is a rich and fascinating history. Today, we’ll walk through the big folk school movements and meet some of the key players who create the folk school story.
Whether or not you currently frequent the Ely Folk School, or any of the eleven folk schools across Minnesota, you likely resonate with the values behind the folk school movement. By attending Tuesday Group today, I feel I can assume you’re people who care about your neighbors, your community, about learning and about regular weekly gathering, thus folk school ideals and visions are not foreign to you.
I thought I’d start with sharing a little bit about me and what I consider to be touchstones on my path toward folk schools. The pieces of my life that grew the values that I now understand as intertwined with the work of folk schools.
I grew up in the Twin Cities suburbs with my parents and two younger siblings. For as long as I can remember, my parents, and eventually me and my siblings, have watched It’s a Wonderful Life every Christmas Eve. (Every year, I cry.) George Bailey spends his whole life creating communal sufficiency, building a healthy community and helping them realize how they each support and matter to each other.
“We’ve got to have faith in each other” George tells a room full of panicked people during a bank run. He taught me from an early age that when people stick together and trust the people around them, we are far more likely to weather and overcome the wider world’s storm. We can learn a lot from each other; we each have a unique way to support one another; and “each man’s life touches so many other lives”
My dad started taking my little brother to Grand Marais for figure carving classes with Harley Refsal at North House Folk School when my brother was about 11 years old. It was a way for my dad and brother to spend quality time with one another, both engage in a new and fitting craft, and to learn about each other through seeing the other make new friends in a classroom environment. Looking at this photo now, I feel a tinge of apprehension and appreciation for Harley and all instructors who meet all students where they're at and treat them as ready and deserving learners, no matter their age. My dad knew Finn well enough to know that he could and would listen well and be comfortable and friendly with a group of students well older than him. He knew he could trust Finn to be an eager student of this topic; and that something like baking would not have captured Finn nearly as well when he was this age.
When I lived in Washington State, I worked with an organization called the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound. FEPPS is a college program open to people incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) in Gig Harbor, WA. It began with AA degrees and last spring, they graduated their very first 4-year Bachelor of Arts class!!
I got involved initially because of my religious studies professor - and founder of FEPPS - Tanya Erzen. She instilled in me a strong belief that everyone deserves access to education and that one person’s increased access to education is a benefit to all of us. She asked us, “Since the majority of people are going to leave prison, there’s a question for all of us: Do we want them to return to prison, or do we want them to have tools and support so they can be successful? As an educator, I believe education should be accessible to everyone that’s outside and inside prison, I hope this will be a model. … (FEPPS) doesn’t just impact a person in prison, it impacts their families and communities. There’s a ripple effect.”
I moved from Washington to Ely. I took my first North House class in September 2020. I drove over with my mountain bike and set up my little one person tent at the Municipal Campground. I spent 2 days experimenting with invasive species to make natural dyes in their big brown classroom. Masked and with windows and doors open wide, our class of six went out walking and foraging. We shared our past experiences with color making and tweaking and got lunch together at the Fisherman’s Daughter. I spent my early mornings biking the under construction Gitchi Gami and my evenings finding remote gravel roads to cycle down.
You probably have similar stories from your own life about the experiences, books, movies, people who helped create your ethos toward living. Perhaps they readily come to your mind, maybe you’ll spend some time later today reflecting and defining them. But, the experiences I shared with you about my life, all came back to my mind as I started learning about folk schools.
But what is a folk school? As I said, many of you know the Ely Folk School. We offer classes and events in myriad subjects, teaching craft and art skills and practice. All EFS events are aimed toward building community, relationships with one another and with oneself, and resiliency toward trying and practicing creativity and new things. And where did EFS come from? Where did the ideas behind EFS start?
To explore that question, let’s go back to the 1820s. Nikolai Frederik Severin (NFS) Grundtvig is known as the father of folk schools. Grundtvig was a Danish poet, philosopher, theologian, and composer. He believed that the classical and state-run education of the time did not focus on things relevant to the common person. He looked around and saw young people forced to go to school, trying to complete Latin forms instead of speaking their native Danish, and made to read stories about Rome while spending no time on the Nordic myths of their nation. Instead of Greek and Latin studies, Grundtvig wanted a school that would affirm the dignity of the common person and rural farmer. Classical studies and education accessible only at universities in big cities installed a divide between life and learning, between the people and the elite. Thus, he proposed a “School for Life”.
Education should be applicable, exciting, engaging, and inspire a desire for more learning. In the 1830s, Grundtvig carried out a tireless mission to convince the Danish population that a new kind of school was critical if Denmark was to have a successful transition to democracy. He believed that only through the establishment of School for Life, would the Danish people be able to build the foundation of skills and the enlightenment necessary for creating a peaceful and just society. Learning ought not be compulsory, it should be rooted in the traditions of a people, it trains the whole person, and it accomplishes these aims through oral culture (singing, storytelling, poetry), and hands-on learning primarily, over and above written culture.
The educational sphere should contain opportunity for and even create flourishing amongst students. And this School for Life model is the foundation of what we now call the folk school.
The first folk schools in Denmark were started after Grundtvig’s death, by Kristian Kold. Kold adhered closely to Grundtvig’s writings and beliefs - the folk high schools in Denmark in the 1800s were about the common farmer folk who were actively excluded from power within Denmark. The folk high school helped people qualify as active and engaged members of society, validate and elevate their culture and practices, and to give them a movement and the means to change the political situation from below and be a place to meet across social borders.
Folk high schools believe that through singing, reading and exploring their surroundings, students can both learn and express their own creativity and happiness. Teachings in standardized, national values such as language, history and constitution are a large component, but are supplemented by a variety of other subjects.
Today, over 70 folk high schools operate across Denmark. The tradition has also spread to its neighboring Scandinavian countries. At these schools, students experience a non-formal residential school offering learning opportunities in different subjects. In denmark most students are between 18 – 24 years old and the length of a typical stay is 4 – 6 months. Most students at folk high schools are engaging in a “gap year” or alternate pause between their formal state education. There are no exams, allowing focus on the learning experience rather than a standardized outcome.
Grundtvig’s ideas didn’t stay in Denmark - they were also adapted to individual communities in the United States. Let’s take a look at the story of our country’s first folk schools.
John C. Campbell and Olive Dame Campbell met in Scotland while each on a personal journey to reconnect with their familial heritage. After recognizing how much social workers from the city struggled to understand the rural clients they were working with, the Campbells applied for and received a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation for a comprehensive anthropological study of the people of Appalachia. They spent four years traveling a region John Campbell defined as the Southern Highlands. Olive collected and recorded Appalachian ballads and handcraft practices while John interviewed farmers on their agricultural traditions. When they asked what the people of Appalachia needed, the most common response was education. They wanted education for adults who were living on the land with the intention of staying there. Schools separated students based on their school performance. Better performing students were given additional opportunities for continuing education. This further education, however, took the individual from his home to work in the city. Those who stayed to work the land were lacking education.
The Campbells knew a little bit about the Danish Folk Schools that provided education for rural people that seemed to lead to successful and content farmers. They wanted to explore how the Danish model could be adopted to the Appalachian region, hopefully enabling people to live happy, productive lives in their home environment with efficient farming, cooperatives, and development of their art and craft skills. Both were hopeful that the quality of life could be improved by education, and in turn wanted to preserve and share with the rest of the world the wonderful crafts, techniques, and tools that the Appalachians used in everyday life.
Before Olive and John could bring to fruition their dream of visiting the Danish folk schools, John passed away. Olive published the results of their 4 year study in John’s name and upon the end of World War I, she and a young teacher from Appalachia, Marguerite Butler, set off to Denmark. The two spent eighteen months visiting over 100 Scandinavian folk schools and returned to the Southern Highlands with heads full of enthusiasm, ethos, spirituality, and experience to start an Appalachian brand of the Danish folk school model.
In 1925, Marguerite and Olive founded the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. Brasstown was selected after a local store owner led a campaign alongside over 100 of his neighbors to petition for the school to put roots there. That store owner, Fred Scroggs, donated the first 20 acres of land for the school.
John C. Campbell Folk School’s first courses focused on agriculture and community. They learned from each other better farming practices. In the first year, the Folk School established the Brasstown Savings and Loan, a credit union; a Farmers Association and poultry hatchery; and the Mountain Valley Creamery cooperative.
In the first ten years, the Folk School also established the Brasstown Carvers. They supported a local group of wood carvers by providing materials, resources, and lessons in selling their work. It quickly became a source of economic development for many young rural men. Carvers would walk to the school weekly to pick up blanks, drop off finished products, and hold informal critiques.. The Brasstown Carvers was a space for local artisans to both maintain their identity and art practice, while also gaining tools and a platform for entrepreneurship. JCCFS created the environment for economic success within the carving community and elevated their work to the greater region.
The John C. Campbell Folk School is rooted in being a source of economic liberation and possibility for the people. They showed that by working together and with a little organization, the community could expand upon skills already prevalent to better their situation.
The JCCFS celebrates 100 years this summer. Over the years, it has become far more focused on handcraft and Olive’s original goals of helping craftspeople preserve and document their artwork, while providing outlets for improvement and entrepreneurship. Their mission statement pledges to: transform lives, bringing people together in a nurturing environment for experiences in learning and community life that spark self-discovery. Though they no longer have a coop or credit union, they are actively nurturing community and individual health and wellbeing.
Around the same time that Olive Campbell was establishing the John C. Campbell Folk School, Myles and Zilphia Horton were working with similar inspiration in Tennessee. The Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market –formerly the Highlander Folk School – was founded in 1932 by Myles and Zilphia Horton, native Tennesseans who wanted to create an educational institution for the poor and working people of Appalachia.
The Hortons started with similar goals and similar inspiration to the Campbells. Myles also spent time visiting Danish folk schools. From his travels, he gained inspiration from the informality of the schools, the close student and teacher interactions, and the use of culture as a tool for learning.
Horton believed that the type of education they were looking to bring to Appalachia began and ended with the lived experiences of its students. Myles Horton recognized that the problems and solutions discussed in the rural South were too often defined and taken on by outsiders rather than seeing the problems and answers that the people had themselves. He created Highlander to be a space where leaders can have space to tackle big problems and gain critical skills for organizing, agitating, and motivating. He knew he wanted a school in Tennessee where black and white workers could be together; addressing social problems of the day.
Early on, Highlander focused on organizing unemployed and working people. They trained many union workers but quickly realized that their work would center on the burgeoning civil rights movement. Highlander’s commitment to ending segregation made it a critically important incubator of the Civil Rights movement. Workshops and training sessions at Highlander helped lay the groundwork for many of the movement’s most important initiatives, including the Montgomery bus boycott, the Citizenship Schools, and the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). People including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. participated in leadership workshops at Highlander.
Highlander began a citizenship program in the 50s, offering training on basic rights and literacy to African Americans; giving people the tools and footing to stand affirmed in their human and American rights.
In 1961, after many attempts by the government to shut them down, the state of Tennessee revoked Highlander’s charter and seized its land and buildings. Undeterred and armed with firm knowledge of civil rights and their own beliefs, the school reopened the next day, forced by the attack to change their name from Highlander Folk School to Highlander Research and Education Center.
All Highlander workshops include no more than 30 people. They sit in a circles, sharing, developing, reflecting, encouraging, analyzing. They have opportunities to share culture with each other through food, stories, and music. Highlander doesn’t focus specifically on a physical craft but it uses folk school philosophy to create strong democratic minded leaders.
Today, Highlander is continuing to fight for justice and equality, supporting organizing and leadership development especially among Latino immigrants and young people, encouraging the use of culture to enhance social justice efforts. Ultimately, Highlander believes that education during social movements is the best way forward toward multiplying democratic leadership. And their divisiveness and relevance is far from outdated. Highlander experienced an arson attack and white supremacist graffiti in 2019. Still undaunted, the school continues to serve as a catalyst for grassroots organizing, using popular education, cultural work, and intergenerational organizing.
Highlander shows us that the idea of folk schools can be implemented many different ways. That its the community building and access to education that is the underlying thread connecting all folk schools. Intergenerational, non-competitive, learning for life takes many forms.
For years, Highlander and John C. Campbell were the only folk schools in the United States. Today there are over 100 folk schools operating in the United States, mostly as nonprofit organizations. Minnesota has the highest concentration of folk schools, as you can see in this map. Today’s American folk schools take many shapes and sizes, from a folk school specializing in web development to one focused on regenerative agriculture.
The Folk Education Association of America leader, Dawn Murphy, hesitates to put a firm definition to a folk school - rather she says it has a fuzzy set of characteristics. A folk school should be influenced by time and context. The folk school that we operate here in Ely will naturally be quite different than a folk school serving a community in Idaho or Tennessee. Why? One of the common themes of folk schools across time and continent is that they originate within the community to whom they belong. By looking at the unique community and place, folk schools build up what and how they run their operations. What we as folk schools do hold in common is Grundtvig’s central vision: no exams, education freely chosen, rooted in traditions of time and place, love in action, and living and learning in community.
In a study of folk school mission statements across the country, Dawn Murphy points out that although many American folk schools today focus more on handcraft than on farming or agriculture, they almost all have a focus on building community. They fulfill their work of building community through handcraft and cultural education. Indeed, our mission is to build community by providing learning experiences that celebrate the wilderness heritage, art, history, culture, and craft of the people of northern Minnesota.
The North American folk school movement started in the mid-90s. They offer embodied, hands-on experiences with natural materials. This graph shows the establishment of new folk schools in North America from 1971 to 2020. We have been seeing an incredible surge in the creation of folk schools. Why? Folk Schools at a 2018 Folk School Alliance gathering, attended by EFS, said it was a feeling of being disconnected, of technology taking over their lives, of wanting to give back to their community and also to know about their community deeply. Wanting to be more connected to people and place and the history of that place––including the indigenous folks whose land they are on.
Beyond the important work of preserving craft and culture; of teaching wood carving and weaving; even more is going on beneath the surface. Concepts of community, personal enlightenment, empowerment, and cultural memory weave together the work of folk schools. We can use folk schools to set new standards for learning, for growth, for networking; inspiring renewal and change. Folk Schools in the United States today can:
Offer a local, place-conscious educational experience
Build collaborations and networks among diverse community groups and organizations
Build on local strengths
Build appreciation of and ownership over local culture and agriculture
Encourage a recovery of local voice, empowerment and cultural memory
Emphasize, dialogue, conversation, and relationships
Offer the expression of an alternative educational paradigm, one that is collaborative, noncompetitive, experiential, and holistic
Provide a context for diverse groups to come together for shared learning
Provide a context for the presentation and discussion of local issues
Inspire local economic initiatives that support the local economy
The Ely Folk School is honored to carry out the work of folk schools by combining what we know of Ely and what we know of folk school history. The Ely Folk School is a place of connection, collaboration, and craft. From our weekly Makers Mornings, where folks come in with unfinished projects, conversation questions, come to ask advice or for feedback, and generally build community, to our Instructor Retreat this past November where teachers came to learn about their values, each others values, and the EFS values, the Ely Folk School acts beyond our classes to build a strong and actively learning network. Here in Ely, we are a gathering space - a central location and crucial third space for many of our town’s creatives. EFS is a space where much community networking and collaboration occurs, where people come to discuss new problems and local happenings as well as ask for feedback and critique on their latest ideas and work.
In the next few years, EFS plans to expand our youth programming, giving our youth the tools and space to be creative, learn to problem solve, and feel proud of what they can make with their own two hands. We are adding a Humanities Program Area, continuing and growing our offerings in human experience. EFS is actively developing more opportunities for our instructors to grow and learn, both in their creativity and teaching toolkit. We’re reaching out to you and asking what you want to learn, what you want to teach. Further, we are looking to remodel our kitchen and deepen our commitment to hospitality and welcome.
From John and Olive Campbells’ research and development stages and the founding of John C. Campbell, folk schools have relied on generous support and buy-in from the community it is a part of and from granting organizations. From Grundtvig to the Hortons, folk school leaders have recognized that it is important to exercise a critical eye over the status quo and the recommended or common path. By talking to and working with our neighbors, we learn what we actually need and can take steps toward reducing the barriers keeping us from that. While issues faced by communities are often not unique to that town, the solutions and ideas most practical, efficient, and rewarding are indeed specialized to each group. The history of folk schools emphasize creating cooperatives, guilds, and unions to build community and individual resilience, connection, and resourcefulness. Many of our folk schools today focus on craft, but as our needs and situations change, that focus will too.
Folk Schools, at the core, focus on non-competitive, intergenerational, learning for life. Each school is unique, focusing on the environment they are a part of. Folk Schools work with, serve, and are served by the community in which they exist. Like George Bailey and the Bailey Bros Building and Loan, they work to find solutions oriented to and initiated by the “normal” people of a community. They know that relationships and trust are some of our most important assets. Like Harley Refsal, they believe that education is meant to be exciting and engaging. If it is, you are entitled to that education, no matter your age or background. Like Professor Erzen, folk schools know that education is a great equalizer - that without offering access to education, even if nontraditional, we cannot hope to encourage an engaged, civic-minded, and community focused public. Like my experience at North House, having space to connect, share ideas, fails, and successes; as well as space to express yourself both creatively and physically, is crucial toward continued expansion and development. Folk Schools have infinite potential to bring us together, to offer the tools and support we need to find clarity, resources to sharpen our problem-solving skills, and to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and our home. By offering this possibility through beautiful and functional art, craft, and cultural teachings, we’re also learning and building stronger individuals and cultures as we go.