2025 has been a milestone year as we joyfully stepped into our year-long 100th Anniversary celebration. 

Our official kick-off at our annual Fall Festival attracted 13,000 people to campus, and hundreds of visitors have explored our revitalized Log Cabin Museum and companion self-guided walking tour. We’ve hosted 699 craft, music and dance classes serving more than 5,000 students, including 588 young people through Little Middle Folk School, Junior Appalachian Musicians, and after school programs. We added five renovated rooms to student housing and restored the Big Barn roof to royal red glory, preserving and beautifying a historic landmark. None of these accomplishments could have happened without generous donors like you. 

In 2026 there will be even more to celebrate. We’ve planned an ambitious slate of activities to enrich the beloved Folk School experience, adding weekly anniversary-themed talks, a special concert series, and simply opening our red door even wider. We are embracing the party! 

We hope you will, too. I’m asking you to help us raise $100,000 by December 31 in honor of our centennial year. We’ll use these funds in two important ways. 

$30,000 will double the power of a new endowment seeded in April by former board member, instructor, and master weaver Tommye Scanlin and her husband, Thomas. These endowed earnings will be dedicated to supporting the John C. Campbell Folk School Collections and Fain Archives (CAFA), a trusted keeper of local and regional history. This dedicated fund will perpetually support documentation, digitization, acquisitions, oral history collection, exhibitions and other initiatives that preserve, strengthen, and interpret our extensive holdings. 

$70,000 will support critical goals in 2026 that will strengthen the Folk School for the next century. Priorities this year include improvements to the clay, jewelry, painting and lower Keith House studios; the addition of six new accessible student rooms; and progress toward the revitalization of Moulton Gardens.  

As we look toward our next hundred years, your support ensures that the Folk School remains a place where curiosity is cultivated, history is honored, and community flourishes.  

Thank you for being part of this remarkable milestone – and for helping us carry our mission forward into its second century.  

Best regards,