Since 1997, people from across the region and the country (and even from outside the U.S.) have come to North House Folk School in Grand Marais to learn what the school calls “traditional northern crafts.” It’s a category that comprises a remarkable range of “making,” including furniture, food, clothing, even blacksmithing.
North House “has had its doors open practically every day for 23 years,” notes Greg Wright, the school’s longtime executive director. That changed with the pandemic. Classes were terminated, and the school’s picturesque campus on the Lake Superior shore was closed.
But that hasn’t stopped North House from continuing its mission. Not long after it shut its doors, the school introduced online content via Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube under the name “Crafting in Place.” Last week, for instance, you could tune in and learn how to make a cedar strip canoe, sharpen tools, and mend sweaters and socks.
We spoke with Wright and Jessa Frost, the Folk School’s program director, about Crafting in Place and other ways that North House is keeping its craft community connected.
TCB: How has your work been changed by the coronavirus?
Greg Wright | Engagement is in our blood. So the digital work we’ve been doing, while a fundamental shift in how we do it, has come so naturally. It’s not why; it’s why not?
Jessa Frost | We made the decision to cancel coursework before the governor’s stay-at-home request. I remember it feeling like a really fraught and challenging decision at the time. The very nature of what we do is the opposite of social distancing. It is about bringing people together who don’t know each other to build a relationship in a shared space.
TCB: Do you anticipate work bouncing back quickly or are you bracing for the worst?
GW | The hunger is there. On Saturday nights, we have a student pizza party. You talk to somebody on the phone, you interact with somebody on the Internet, and they’ll say, "I just can’t wait until we cook our next pizza on the Grand Marais harbor."
From a pragmatic perspective, we’re an institution. We want to be smart. We’re of course hoping for the best, and we’re planning for the worst. The fiscal model we’re working off of assumes that we’ll be closed a lot more than three months, and that the return to programmatic vibrancy will be slow-motion.
Like any other institution, we’ve done a lot of financial modeling. We’ve done a cash flow analysis for the next 12 months. Half of our revenue base is tuition, so this is cutting deep. That said, we’ve applied for federal programs, and thank goodness we applied on day one. We do have a cash reserve fund. We’ve also signed up for the Minnesota Shared Work program, and the staff has said, ‘We’re in. We’re willing to take a little pain to make this work.’ So we’ve reduced staff to 75 percent or 50 percent, depending on their roles. And because we have other revenue streams from individual donors and foundation partners, we’re going to be OK.
TCB: Any bright spots in this crisis?
GW | One of the key upsides is the breadth of the community that supports this school. When we were cancelling coursework, students were saying, "Don’t send me back my money. I want to give you some of that. You have to keep going." That’s pretty gratifying. The other piece is all these new online content skills that the instructors and North House are learning. These skills are going to keep us connected even once we’re around this Covid-19 corner.
TCB: How did Crafting in Place come about?
JF | We kicked off Crafting in Place about four or five days after we closed. A fundamental belief in the North House community, and one that I think resonates in a time like this, is that craft and working with your hands are deeply healing.
In my mind, Crafting in Place started out as "Let’s just put some beautiful things out into the wild and crazy world of social media." We’ve always had a social media presence, but it had never been a huge priority for us. So this seemed like an opportunity to build on what we’d done. We work with incredible artists and instructors who make beautiful things and who want to share their knowledge. That’s pretty fertile ground for creating content.
And we wanted to build something that reflected the character of North House, which is very personal, informal, and an authentic experience of connecting with others. We knew we could use the ‘live’ feature that’s offered on Instagram and Facebook to have people be able to ask questions and interact with someone at the very time they’re turning a bowl.
We’ve also had a ton of students and others to send photos of their work using ‘#StillCrafting.’ We share those three of four times a day, primarily on Instagram. It’s everything from pottery to weaving and knitting to bagels. It’s been really fun.
And we can’t overstate the importance of Cook County’s investment in a powerful broadband infrastructure. I don’t know what we’d be doing if we didn’t have that. It’s been huge.
TCB: What has it been like to work from home?
GW | Every one of our employees, except for our maintenance team members, is working remotely. And we all have broadband. We’re a craft school. We’re supposed to be good at smoke signals, right? In fact, we’re able to share our story with the world.
At the same time, I get to hear my daughter practice her violin. I get to run outside and throw logs into the wood stove under the sap pan because we’re boiling down sap to make maple syrup.
JF | It’s a privilege to be able to stay home and feel safe and spend extra time with family. And to be in a place like Cook County where you can be in the wilderness on a hike.
You can tell that we’re pretty folk-schooly, hands-on people because all of us have personal computers that are barely holding it together. Everybody is using the computer they had in college or 10 years ago and patching it along. But we’re making it work, and it’s been fun, in a strange way.
TCB: Any tips for working productively while working remotely?
GW | Put together a great team, and trust that team. If we’re going to be whole at the end of this journey, we have to be whole as individuals, communities, and institutions. And trust yourself—give yourself room to live in this different world, knowing that there’s hope out there. There’s a future that we’re all going to love to get back to.
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April 28, 2020 at 01:59AM
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A Hands-On Craft School Stays in Touch Online - Twin Cities Business Magazine
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