John C. Campbell Folk School - Bethany Chaney and Annie Fain Barralon

In this episode we learn about the John C. Campbell Folk School, located in Brasstown, North Carolina. Founded just over 100 years ago in 1925, the John C. Campbell Folk School was inspired by the Danish Grundtvigian folk high school tradition and established to serve the culturally distinctive, but economically depressed mountainous region of southern Appalachia. Today, it is one of the oldest and largest folk schools in North America and the guiding inspiration for dozens of younger folk schools around the country, including the Driftless Folk School here in Viroqua, Wisconsin.In this conversation I speak with JCCFS instructor and Programming Development Manager Annie Fain Barralon and Executive Director Bethany Chaney about this inspiring history and about what it is like to participate in a multi-day course in folk arts, craft, music, or dance on their beautiful campus in far western North Carolina. We talk about who attends and teaches these courses, as well as about opportunities for young people to spend longer periods at the Folk School such as their Work Study and Student Host programs (see links below). Finally, Annie Fain talks about what it is like to work as a creative artist in the context of a living folk arts tradition, walking the fine line between original innovation, cultural exchange, and loyalty to heritage.Annie Fain Barralon is a native of the crafts and music/dance community of Brasstown, North Carolina and the John C. Campbell Folk School's Programming Development Manager. She teaches a variety of classes at the school including book arts, clawhammer banjo, and several styles of dance–Appalachian clogging/flatfooting, English waltz clog, Northwest Morris, and Bal Folk (learned when she married into a French family). Annie Fain plays banjo and banjo uke for the all-woman string band, Blue Eyed Girl, and has danced with both Loafers Glory Clog Morris and the Green Grass Cloggers. She sells her handmade books, greeting cards, and original watercolors regionally and is a member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild. Bethany Chaney is Executive Director of the John C. Campbell Folk School. Prior to joining the Folk School, Bethany served more than 25 years in a variety of non-profit and public service roles, specializing in resource development, strategic planning, and community and economic development programming. She is an award-winning writer, a former NC Arts Council Fellow, and an avid maker of pine needle baskets, a craft she first nurtured as a Folk School student. In 2025 she was named by Country Living Magazine as a Top 100 Design Influencer as an arts advocate. John C. Campbell Folk School - https://www.folkschool.org/JCCFS Work Study & Student Host Programs - https://www.folkschool.org/programs/student-host-and-work-study/Find a Folk School near you! Folk School Alliance - https://www.folkschoolalliance.org/Driftless Folk School - http://www.driftlessfolkschool.org/Thoreau College - http://thoreaucollege.org/