A folk school is budding in the prairie west of Champaign.
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It’s a first for Illinois, and it comes at a time when folk schools are seeing an uptick in popularity — classes on watercolor and bread baking aligning with pandemic-launched hobbies — while also seeking to become more inclusive of craftwork from marginalized communities.
In the autumn, the first workshops will open at The Farms folk school, under the auspices of Allerton Park and Retreat Center (515 Old Timber Road, Monticello; 217-333-3287; allerton.illinois.edu). The historic Allerton Park complex — home, farm, gardens and grounds — has long been owned and operated by the University of Illinois, and hosts art classes and activities mainly for nearby residents.
But the ambitious expansion of The Farms will elevate those artisan offerings and merge them with the fast-growing folk school movement. Its classes, already cherished locally, will grow — yes, painting, but for a week, perhaps, of painting en plein air in the Allerton gardens. Yes, nature walks, but for a long weekend, maybe searching along the way for materials for collage.
The staff is figuring it out as the opening date nears, highly aware that in the process, they have a rare chance to create a folk school that’s grounded in the whole of prairie and Illinois culture, and especially to include folks who haven’t always been represented at folk schools.
“You can take on history in a new way,” said Derek Peterson, executive director of Allerton Park, referencing the steeped-in-tradition heritage of folk schools. “We have a collective vision with the university, and they believe in what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”
Formalizing Allerton programs into a folk school feels almost inevitable, given that programming was ambling in the folk school direction already, Peterson said, with classes in Ukrainian egg design, folk dancing, flower arranging, and storytelling as a catalyst for social change. “I could see it,” Peterson said. “We just needed to capture what we were doing.”
The first order of business was to understand how Allerton’s legacy could merge with the tie-dyed image that has characterized American folk schools since the first one, the John C. Campbell Folk School, opened in 1925 in North Carolina.
The generally accepted criteria is that folk schools create a structure for accomplished artisans to teach their skills while fostering community in the process. Watercolor painting taught at a folk school, for example, stresses process and cultural history as much as technique, unlike a class taught at an art school or community college.
But the folk school movement, rooted in Danish tradition, has largely perpetuated a northern European definition of both folk and school. While data is scant, diversity has not been the movement’s strong suit, said Dawn Murphy, vice president of the Folk Education Association of America. Weeklong classes on specialized skills like blacksmithing, quilting, hand-crafting mountain musical instruments, and other esoterica largely appeal to well-off, retired white people who have time and money to indulge.
Efforts to diversify, particularly at newer schools in Alaska, Minnesota and Wisconsin, are taking hold. At Driftless Folk School (driftlessfolkschool.org), a four-hour drive northwest of Chicago in Viroqua, Wisconsin, instructors with Oneida, Ojibwe and Potawatomi heritage teach courses on traditional black ash basket weaving and hand-forging copper bowls alongside candle making and home brewing.
“Part of the idea with the university is to push boundaries and open things up and re-imagine what ‘folk’ could mean,” said Deke Weaver, a professor of new media at the University of Illinois. “Not throwing out woodworking that you might find at a traditional folk school, but making the tent a little broader and a little more inclusive.”
In coming months before The Farms open, the focus will be on collaboration and connecting with creative communities across Illinois. Central Illinois arts councils can offer input on which arts and crafts to prioritize as Allerton outbuildings are redesigned as group studios. Program coordinators will reach out to Indigenous communities in Illinois to shape coursework. They also could build on the Allerton artist-in-residence program, which began in late 2020.
“We’ll work with what we have and see what people want, before we put in the infrastructure,” said Bridget Frerichs, associate director of advancement for Allerton. “As we grow, the space will grow with the programming. It will have to.”
Of about 80 members of the Folk Education Association, none are in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio or Missouri, Murphy said. Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan each have several schools; the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast are also hotbeds of school growth.
Allerton has a huge advantage over the dozens of groups across the country trying to launch schools, Murphy said, because it already had the physical space and the financial and administrative support of the University of Illinois. Allerton Park’s campus also boasts its own lodging for visitors, with guest rooms in the historic mansion, gatehouse, lodge and other buildings starting at $95 per night, allowing travelers to enjoy folk school classes during a long weekend or trip to central Illinois.
Finding instructors who already have a following is a classic way of cracking the chicken-and-egg startup dilemma, said Scott Hayden, who did exactly that as he helped build New York’s Adirondack Folk School, where he is currently the executive director.
Central Illinois is rife with potential for regionally authentic content: “What about woodworking or pioneer cooking or building an Abraham Lincoln lean-to?” Hayden said.
Allerton has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to use its own heritage to catalyze a genuine and unique program, he said, and in the process, equip participants to create their own heirlooms redolent of the place and the time they spent there — like the chef’s knife he made at his own school.
“You leave with a great story, a great craft item,” Hayden said, “and maybe you’ve made a new friend.”
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Joanne Cleaver is a freelance writer.