‘The Freest Place Wins’

Growing up in Cherokee County, Jan Davidson had always heard of the John C. Campbell Folk School. He recalls his first pilgrimage to the Brasstown campus as a first-grader on a field trip. 

“We did a little dance. We all decided it was a lot more fun school than Murphy Elementary,” Davidson said with his contagious chuckle. “One of my buddies, said, ‘you know that dancing, I didn’t’ understand it, but I did like holding hands with the girls.’”

Davidson later made a career for himself as executive director of the venerable folk school, leading its community and rich array of craft classes into the 21st century. 

Now after 25 years, Davidson is stepping down.  

“Working is really rewarding when you see people getting a kick out of what you’re trying to do,” he reflected in his rustic office in the historic Keith House. “I tell jokes. Sometimes people laugh. In trying to a wrestle an organization along, what you do to get there is not simple as a one-liner, but what you get back is not just a giggle. Anytime you do something right, you change someone’s life and they probably never will forget it.”

Davidson hails from a storied mountain clan, including Samuel “Cowbell” Davidson, the first white settler in the Swannanoa Valley. 

That Davidson forebear was killed by Cherokee who lured him into the woods with the bell stolen from his cow. The Davidsons later drifted down into Cherokee County after the removal of the native inhabitants on the Trail of Tears. 

As a teenager, his father took him to a music show in Asheville to hear Frank Proffitt, the Watauga County singer who first popularized the ballad “Tom Dooley.” 

Davidson wrote his first and only fan letter. 

“I told him I really wanted to get a banjo just like he was playing. ‘I’m going to get a job,’ I wrote. I was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to get a banjo.”

After graduate school and a decade as curator at the Mountain Heritage Center at Western Carolina University, Davidson found his calling at John C. Campbell.  

Davidson knows the mission statement by heart. “We are to provide experiences in noncompetitive education and community life that are—get this part—joyful and enlivening. I’m very proud to have joy and enlivening in the mission statement. That’s pretty good stuff to work for everyday.”

The Campbell Folk School dates to the Craft Revival of the 1920s when social reformers farmed out across the Southern Appalachians, working to lift the poor farmers and resurrect the native handicrafts as an economic boost to the remote region.

Olive Dame Campbell was the Massachusetts-born bride of John C. Campbell, a missionary school teacher. The couple brought their humanitarian vision to the Southern Appalachians. She would help English songcatcher Cecil Sharp document centuries-old ballads in Madison County and across the mountains that originated in the Scottish Highlands.

The Campbells were fascinated by the Danish Folk School movement, which focused on community building through vocational crafts. What worked in Denmark could work in Southern Appalachians, they believed, in  the building confidence among isolated farm youth. 

They had tickets to board a ship to Denmark when World War I broke out. John died in 1919, but Olive edited his papers and continued his quest.

She made the trip to Denmark with her colleague Marguerite Butler. 

“Breaking away from grades and credits, (the Danes) have sought to relate the culture of books to the culture of the soil, which have put personality and its influence above the accumulation of facts, and the work of every day above mere academic learning,” Olive Campbell wrote. 

In 1925, along with Butler, Olive opened the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown. 

Sitting behind his book-cluttered, paper-strewn disk in his wood-paneled office in the Keith House, just a few doors down from Campbell’s original office, Davidson admits he often asked himself, “WWOD. What would Olive Do?”

During his tenure, Davidson has tried to keep the founder’s original vision alive.

One of his first moves was to make the folk school a year-round operation rather than seasonal. That was a serious move with 45 historic buildings, many in need of winterization and repair to serve the school. 

He led renovation efforts to restore Hill House, Keith house, Francis Whitaker Blacksmith Shop and Tower House. 

But it’s not just historic preservation.  

Davidson oversaw the design and constitution of the Energy Star-certified Field House for student housing, bringing the Folk School into the 21st century. 

The school added new studios for cooking, blacksmithing, painting, woodturning, book and paper arts, spinning and music. He also helped establish conservation easements, create bird and wildlife sanctuaries, construct new walking trails and preserve the natural beauty of the 300-acre campus.  

He received The North Carolina Award for Fine Arts, the state’s highest civilian honor, in 2007. Davidson was also instrumental in the completion of the school’s first major capital campaign and the establishment of the John C. Campbell Folk School Endowment with more than $4 million in hand. The Folk School has 23,000 friends on Facebook.     

Mindful of the past, Davidson has labored to preserve the history behind the school, establishing the History Center and the Fain Archives. In partnership with UNC-TV, He made a film “Sing Behind the Plow: John C. Campbell Folk School,” which was nominated for two regional Emmy awards. 

He’s quick to underscore that John C. Campbell is no museum of dead crafts or some nostalgic retreat to supposedly simpler times. “I’ve been fighting against nostalgia my whole career.”

In his note to students in the current catalog, Davidson writes: “If you’re trying to get back to a simpler time, forget it. Times are complex. Don’t come here to find the past, unless it is your own. If we are nostalgia, we are toast. Our looking back is to find lessons for the hear and now, and gird ourselves for the future.”

Davidson’s goal has always been to keep the Folk School relevant. Under his leadership the school has more than doubled its enrollment—from 2500 students to 6,000 annually—increasing classes from 150 to 864 offerings each year.

These aren’t just whittling whimmy-diddles or hooking rugs, but hands-on experiences in small classes with personal attention from masters who gather at Brasstown from around the nation and world. 

 “I really wanted the artists who came here to feel they had a home. They have to be really good and have a passion for what they do.”

Down at the dining hall, Davidson stops to chat with master woodturner Pat Johnson, who doffs his unique hat. 

“I see you’ve got the wooden hat on,” Davidson laughs.

And Johnson holds out his headgear for inspection. What at first looks like a fine felt Stetson turns out to be made of wood, turned from a single 50-pound block of cherry.

Johnson first met Davidson 25 years ago when the Alabama master craftsman brought his talents to John C. Campbell. 

“Jan’s been a great inspiration,” he says. “He’s always had a sense of how to keep community development at the forefront of changing times.”

Davidson and the Campbell school have attracted cutting-edge artists at the top of their crafts. Scott Cole leads kaleidoscope making classes, but he wants to use a barn silo on the property to construct the world’s largest kaleidoscope with cut glass at the top to catch the sun’s raises in a giant shifting prism of rainbow colors. 

On Mondays, Davidson leads the Morningsong, a daily tradition that Olive Dame Campbell brought back from the Danish folk schools. 

Davidson sings songs, including old-time favorites “I am as free as a little bird as I can be,” which he learned from his grandmother. 

But mainly, he tells stories about Olive Campbell and the history and mission of the school. Then the students go off to their classes in weaving, carving, blacksmithing broom-making, book-binding, cooking or the dozens of other specialties. 

Davidson underscores the noncompetitive nature. There are no college credits offered here, or grades. When Friday rolls around, capping each week’s classes, the students have mastered skills and made lifelong friends. 

Marybeth Garmoe hails from Minnesota and first came down to Brasstown and the craft school in 2014, taking fiddle and basket-making. She returned this winter as a student host, working on staff for four months to help visiting students in exchange for free classes. Recently, she tried her hand at crafting Shaker boxes, rounded containers made from thin wood. 

 “Oh my goodness,” Garmoe said with Midwestern aplomb when asked about Davidson’s influence. “His charisma and Southern charm are really important. He keeps this place as a folk school rather than just a craft school. This is a very special place that’s much more community based than most schools.”

Deborah Needleman was saying goodbye to her fellow students after an intensive week in Shaker broom-making. She had made four big brooms and got carried away with smaller brooms to give to friends for little brushes. 

“I fell in love with the people,” Needleman said referring to her fellow “broomies.” 

Needleman had needed the pastoral setting and the hands-on craft session after transitioning from work as a high-powered Manhattan magazine editor. 

She had Googled the craft school among many others options around the nation, but was drawn by the community spirit. 

“It’s been an unbelievably powerful experience,” she says, giving Davidson a friendly hug.

The mission of John C. Campbell may be more important than ever, Davidson believes, in a time when more people are isolated, heads down in social media and the glow of the omnipresent screens of their smart phones. 

 “The future looks really good. I’m encouraged to see younger people joining the staff,” he says. 

Ahead, he and his wife, Nanette, are eager to take the annual pilgrimage of Campbell Folk School’s Morris dance teams to England late this spring. And back home, Davidson has books to write, music to play and plenty of jokes to chuckle over. 

In a sense, he is still following in Olive Dame Campbell’s footsteps, who stepped down as director after 25 years. He’s proud of the place he leaves behind to the next director and John C. Campbell’s next century of craft and community. 

“There’s an incredible freedom here for students and teachers,” he says 

Then he chuckles. 

“You can say, ‘The freest place wins.’ Put that down to Jan Davidson, old mountain geezer.”