Community Field School

John C. Campbell Folk School (Brasstown, NC) 

Dates: Thursday evenings 6:30-8:30 PM on March 6, 13, 27 & April 3, 17, 24 

Learn how to document the culture and heritage of your community!

This 6-week hands-on workshop will provide skills in cultural fieldwork and exhibit creation. Participants will learn skills such as interviewing, audio recording, and photography. These skills and fieldwork will be put to use as participants collaborate with their peers to curate the first display in the new community exhibit space at the Folk School’s Log Cabin Museum. Field school participants will work together to identify a theme and content for the exhibit, learning skills such as writing, curatorship, exhibit design, and collaboration along the way.

Drawing from the Folk School’s foundational principles for community-driven programs that can help train and educate local young adults, this field school is geared toward participants interested in museums, archives, exhibit design, or other cultural and documentary arts…or anyone who is just curious!

Who can participate? Open to local students (Tri-County and high school students) and interested young adults who want to learn documentary practices, curatorship, and exhibit design. While there is no age limit, young adults aged 16-29 are encouraged to apply. Preference will be given to applicants from the following local counties: North Carolina: Cherokee, Clay, Macon, Swain, Jackson, and Graham; Georgia: Fannin, Towns, Union, Gilmer, Rabun, and Qualla Boundary; Tennessee: Polk.

No experience or educational background necessary. Equipment will be provided, though participants may want to use their own computers and smart phones, if available. All participants who complete the Field School and participate in the Community Exhibit will receive a $500 stipend.

Kelley Totten is an associate professor of folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Originally from Marietta, Georgia, she has been hooked on the Folk School and the Brasstown area since she was a Folk School host in 2004. Trained in curatorship, exhibit design, and archives, she has created and consulted on multiple exhibit projects over the last ten years, including “Show and Tell: Craft at the John C. Campbell Folk School,” an exhibit at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures in Bloomington, Indiana (2017-2018). She has mentored multiple student exhibit projects, including “Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future – The Grenfell Campus Wampum Belt Project” at the Craft Council Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador (2021), and two student Field School exhibits in Port Union NL, “Making It Home” (2023) and “Some Day on Clothes” (2024). Kelley is currently working with the Folk School to curate the newly renovated Log Cabin Museum.  

Susanna Pyatt is the Collections & Archives Manager at John C. Campbell Folk School. She has a MA in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University and previously served as Curator for the Sisters of Loretto Heritage Center in rural Nerinx, KY. Susanna has conducted several independent oral history projects and coordinated the local history exhibition in Marion County, KY, developed alongside the Smithsonian traveling exhibit “Crossroads: Change in Rural America.” Originally from the western Piedmont region of North Carolina, she is happy to now call Murphy home.