The Folk School of Fayetteville is once again up and running in the Walker-Stone House. Ozarks at Large’s Grace Penry reports on what’s happened between the school’s closure in August and now.
The Fayetteville Folk School has been run out of the historic Walker House since 2023. However, back in August, the future of the school’s location was uncertain after it ran out the lease. The school temporarily closed. In October, the school reopened at the same location in the Walker House.
“Where should I start? What happened with the lease?”
That’s Abby Hollis, president-elect of the Fayetteville Folk School, explaining what happened between August and October. She says it started when the original founder and leaseholder, Bernice Hembree, along with her husband, Bryan Hembree, left.
“So their 501(c)(3) is totally separate from Ozark Folkways. So they made a very generous donation to Ozark Folkways of a lot of the assets that make the programming here possible. But organizationally, they’re no longer involved here. So in preparation of that, she called together people who had been involved at the folk school and basically said, 'I’m starting this new chapter, but this is and always has been a community music space,' and sort of gave the group the chance to imagine what it might look like for the community itself to keep that going.”
Abby Hollis is one of these people. Hollis first got involved at Ozark Folkways in Winslow through the Spinning Guild, a club for people who like to knit, crochet, spin or otherwise enjoy fiber arts.
From there, Hollis joined the Fiber Fest committee in charge of the biannual festival celebrating fiber arts. Then she was elected to the board, helping make decisions around policy. She became president-elect this year and will become official president in January.
At these meetings, which continue to this day, Hollis says, they thought about why they love the Fayetteville Folk School.
“It’s brought us together for this long, and how could we keep this thing going? We know it’s important to our community, and the solution that we came to was this idea of incorporating that programming under the Ozark Folkways umbrella.”
Which left the group with a choice: continue the school in a different location or try to get the lease.
“And so over the last several months, Ozark Folkways has been talking with Experience Fayetteville and talking about what this place really means to our community and the value that it brings. And both the financial value, because that is very real, like there are a million different reports to pull from, and also this element of cultural value in having places like this that are what make Fayetteville Fayetteville. And ultimately we sort of aligned—us being Folkways and Folk School—and the A&P Commission all saw the economic and hand in hand with that the cultural value of this place.”
The Advertising and Promotion Commission administers the Advertising and Promotion Fund to promote tourism and conventions in Fayetteville. The folk school is one such recipient. However, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.
“And there is some friction. At first we didn’t understand why we weren’t seeing eye to eye, but being able to get people together, both internally in our community here and with people, whether that’s the A&P Commission or whoever it is, and really just having those conversations and understanding what each group of stakeholders is after. At the end of the day, really everyone involved is involved because they want to see Fayetteville be a great place to live and to visit. So those conversations have been really great to have and cool to see a change from people feeling like they’re on opposite teams to talking through it and getting to a point where we can feel like we’re all on the same team and working toward the same goal.”
Now, after a hiatus, the folk school is once again open to the public. Hollis received the key to the house Oct. 1, retaining the Walker House location as her first big project as president-elect. She explains that Ozark Folkways has taken over the administrative side of the school, and that the Fayetteville Folk School won’t look too different from what it did before, at least not at first.
“And we’re prioritizing bringing back past programs for now and really making sure that we stay true to the mission of this place being a community music space. But as time goes on, we’re excited also about the opportunity to bring more visual arts and crafts programming, like what we do in Winslow. We’re actually doing a craft market and square dance combo the night of the Lighting of the Ozarks on Nov. 21. So that’ll be our first step into crafts here.”
Finally, Hollis emphasizes the importance of the community to their success in obtaining the lease. She calls it critical.
"Following that initial meeting with the A&P Commission. After that meeting, there was this beautiful outpouring of support from the community, where just a ton of letters were sent in to the A&P Commission from people saying what this place meant to them and describing it as a heart of Fayetteville and a place that still feels authentic to Fayetteville even amidst all the growth and the change. And that really is a pretty critical part of the story.”
On Nov. 21, the Fayetteville Folk School will host a square dance and craft market during the Lighting of the Ozarks.
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