John C. Campbell Folk School

The John C. Campbell Folk School, founded in 1925 by Olive Dame Campbell and Marguerite Butler, was organized on the model of folk and craft schools common in Scandinavia. The original purpose of the School was to preserve the indigenous culture of the southern highlands and to transmit these traditions to young people.

The John C. Campbell Folk School was founded in 1925 by Olive Dame Campbell and Marguerite Butler. The School was organized on the model of folk and craft schools common in Scandinavia. The original purpose of the School was to preserve the indigenous culture of the southern highlands and to transmit these traditions to young people. For an extensive history of the John C. Campbell Folk School, see Pat McNelley, The First 40 Years: The John C. Campbell Folk School (1966) and Laura O'Keefe, Growing is the Reason for Being: An Experiment in Education at the John C. Campbell Folk School (1992).

The School was established in Brasstown, North Carolina in 1925 by Olive Dame Campbell and Marguerite Butler (later Bidstrup) on a Scandanavian model to promote adult education in a cultural context.

The School was founded in 1925 by Olive Dame Campbell and Marguerite Butler and named in honor of John C. Campbell, Mrs. Campbell's deceased husband, a minister and teacher in Appalachia. After John C. Campbell's, death in 1919, Olive Dame Campbell completed his sociological study of Appalachia, THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDER AND HIS HOMELAND, and, accompanied by Marguerite Butler, went to Denmark to study that country's adult education, folk schools, and cooperatives. After returning from Denmark, Campbell and Butler searched for a location for a school to be modeled on those they had seen in Denmark. They finally settled on Brasstown, North Carolina on thirty acres donated by the Scroggs family, where the six hundred residents of Brasstown helped build the school and donated other services.

The School offered intensive two-week courses in weaving, woodcarving, blacksmithing, pottery, and other crafts, with the School achieving special recognition for the local woodcarvers that received training at the school. Annual events such as Folk-Dance Week and the Fall Festival of Arts, Crafts, and Music were instituted. In the 1950s and 1960s, numerous new projects, such as a literacy program and experimental agriculture, were undertaken. Scholarships and student internships were also offered. Community cooperatives, such as Brasstown Savings and Loan Association and the Mountain Valley Creamery, were sponsored by the School.