On one of the last summer days of the year, as leaves were yellowing and beginning to blush red, Coleen O’Connell came to CCLC to teach a nature printing class, one for the public, and one for the students in our high school program. Participants from teenagers through adulthood explored our campus to collect specimens for printing. By creating art from nature in a supportive learning environment, these participants not only developed relationships with each other, but also developed a deeper understanding of the natural world that is our home. Many described the experience as feeling particularly healing.

This recent nature printing class illustrates the continued connection to folk school values present on campus. Lifelong learners return to campus to learn new skills, hone developed ones, and cultivate deeper connections with the assets of this place—be they the diversity of plants that were ideal nature printing muses or the diversity of people with inspiring skills to share. From Monday Night Music to Hunter Safety, we foster such connections.

Daphne Loring, our Assistant Manager of Retreats and Community Programs, also describes the importance of our offerings being cooperative and grassroots. “The folk school principles of collaboration and grassroots are foundational principles to CCLC. In order to be relevant and empower, we must emerge from community. Collaboration strengthens relationships, leads to creative outcomes, and leverages capacity.” We build upon the opportunity of having our visiting instructors here by coupling public learning opportunities with opportunities that fit with our high school program’s curriculum.  For example, after several years of archaeologists using CCLC as their home base during local digs, they are developing a relationship with the high school program to monitor a nearby midden.  This month, Cobscook students will commence this project and we’ll co-host a lecture open to the public.

The collaborative grassroots nature of our program offerings is showcased in our October 19th Inaugural Downeast Apple and Arts Day. “Our spring scion exchange and other fruit tree workshops are always popular,” says Daphne, “so we started talking with Healthy Acadia to consider ways to celebrate as a community when those trees start fruiting in the fall. We worked together to bring in people locally and from across the state to create an event designed to celebrate the heritage of apples and art in the region. Healthy Acadia is a critical partner in realizing this programming.”

The Cobscook Gathering, an example of some of our earliest programming, brought people together for immersive skill-building and personal development through courses such as timber framing, revitalizing indigenous languages, the ecology of Cobscook Bay, using popular education to understand economics, and more.  These Gatherings took place in Edmunds before we had a campus. Now, nearly two decades later,  our campus vision is complete, and we are excited to return to our roots and begin the planning process for a summer 2020 Cobscook Gathering. In keeping with tradition, this will be a grassroots, collaborative celebration of place-based learning and connections. If you want to be part of this planning circle, please contact Daphne at (207) 733-2233 or daphne@thecclc.org. Let’s keep these folk school values alive!

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Folk School Profile: Highlander Folk School, now Highlander Research and Education Center, Tennessee

Founding Year: 1932

Mission: “Highlander serves as a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the South. We work with people fighting for justice, equality and sustainability, supporting their efforts to take collective action to shape their own destiny. Through popular education, language justice, participatory research, cultural work, and intergenerational organizing, we help create spaces—at Highlander and in local communities — where people gain knowledge, hope and courage, expanding their ideas of what is possible.”

What they do today:  Appalachian Transition Fellowship nurtures collaboration between emerging leaders and host communities to advance economic and social change in the region. Children’s Justice Camp, for children ages 6-12, focused on sharing, healing, and learning justice, art, and action. Greensboro Justice Fund Fellowship, a yearlong training for community organizers providing opportunities for community action and team-building support for fellows on community initiatives. Seeds of Fire, brings together Southern and Appalachian youth-led and youth centered groups and individuals organizing for social justice and change to provide guidance, mentorship, political education and skill-based trainings that gives room for young people to take the resources they need and work towards a just future.