Walking in someone else’s story: Swain students find common ground with NYC students

On the surface, students in Swain County grow up worlds apart from students in New York City. 

Where culture meets community

Amidst all of last year’s romping, stomping, clogging and dancing during Folkmoot USA, one event may have slipped off the radar of festival attendees.

Folkmoot’s Cultural Conversations: Inclusiveness program graduates first class

When most people think about Folkmoot, they doubtlessly think about the huge 10-day international folk dance festival that has taken over Western North Carolina each July for more than three decades. 

Folkmoot's Cultural Conversations: A more equitable community

Over the course of the six Cultural Conversations sessions I participated in at Folkmoot, our diverse little group — sitting in one big circle — learned a lot about ourselves, and each other.

Folkmoot's Cultural Conversations: At the intersection of inequality

Cultural bias and conflict aren’t new to Western North Carolina; chattel slavery and Cherokee removal still leave a deep and painful legacy for many in the region — something Folkmoot’s Cultural Conversations program seeks to remedy. 

Folkmoot’s Cultural Conversations: Identifying identity

Hundreds, if not thousands of “civic ambassador” programs begin each month in cities and counties across the nation, including in Haywood County, where the Chamber of Commerce’s eight-session Leadership Haywood program yearly produces a dozen or more “civic ambassadors” armed with firsthand knowledge of how all sectors of the community might work together in harmony.

Folkmoot’s Cultural Conversations: One big circle

Arriving in Waynesville shortly before last year’s Folkmoot Friendship Festival, I like many who’d come before me had no idea what it was.

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