As you explore the grounds, the past seems to meld into the present as you watch how the Folk School seeks to draw forth the best in people. As it has from its beginning days in 1925, the Folk School offers two kinds of development to its students: inner growth as creative thoughtful individuals and social development as tolerant, caring members of a community.

Throughout its history the Folk School has worked toward these goals through the performing arts, agriculture and crafts rooted in the traditions of southern Appalachia and other cultures of the world.

Of course, lifestyles and relationships to tradition have changed since the school was founded in 1925. Rural life, no longer isolated, is part of a global life that is increasingly interdependent. However, the individual expression and social interaction that the School encourages through music, crafts, gardening and dance are still meaningful today, regardless of where participants live. Only the materials, tools and motivations for these traditional arts have changed.

In fact, as director Jan Davidson says, "The satisfactions of developing skills in a noncompetitive, supportive environment are useful correctives to the hard-driven, often dehumanizing regimentation of much of today’s world."

About 60% of the students of the Folk School are former students who have attended previous classes, bearing a clear testimony to the relevance of the School’s unique offerings. Thisyear’s summer classes include the usual wide range of arts and crafts. They include basketry, bead work, blacksmithing, calligraphy, wood arts, thread art, storytelling, photography, puppetry, nature studies, music, dance, dyeing, genealogy and much more.

Instruction at the Folk School is non-competitive—no grades, no credits, no degrees, no pitting of one individual against another.

This method of teaching is what the Danes called "The Living Word." Discussion and conversation rather than reading and writing are emphasized and most instruction is hands-on. Patterned after the folk schools in rural Denmark, these "Schools for life" had helped transform the Danish countryside into a vibrant, creative force. John C. Campbell and his wife Olive Dame talked of establishing such a school in the rural southern United States as an alternative to the higher education facilities that drew intelligent young people to the cities and away from their family farms.

After John died in 1919, Olive and her friend Marguerite Butler continued to study the idea and explore options in the Brasstown area. In 1925, thanks to the people of Cherokee and Clay Counties pledging labor, building materials and other support and the Scroggs family donating 75 acres of land, the Folk School began its work.