Humanity’s future is less industrial.
At Groundwork, we believe that a livable and just future must be a less industrial future. For that future to happen, people of all backgrounds need to begin exploring what it looks like to live outside of systems that rely on industrialism, capitalism, and consumerism. The Groundwork Folk School is a step towards that future, teaching skills that pre-date industrial culture and creating spaces of joy, wonder, creativity, and hope for a beautiful future. Groundwork Folk School’s mission is to facilitate the preservation and teaching of traditional and non-industrial skills, crafts, and lifeways.
Willow Basketry
Willow is a traditional weaving material. Groundwork’s weaving classes teach the foundations of northern European weaving styles, from harvest to finished basket.
Basketry Class Descriptions
Hide Tanning
Woodworking
Backstrap Weaving
Backstrap weaving is a complex art form requiring no loom, just a few sticks and some string.
Fiber Arts
From wool processing, to spinning yarn, and natural dyes, our fiber arts classes offer an alternative to today’s industrial textile industry.
Current Fiber Arts Classes
Immersions and Workshops
Winter – Spring 2025 Schedule
| Dates | Location | Teacher(s) | Class | Register |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 18, 2025 | Palisade, Colorado | Jenna Bradford | Willow Weaving: Tatzas and Tension Trays | Register |
| February 1, 2025 | Paonia, Colorado | Jenna Bradford | Willow Weaving: Bases | Register |
| February 9, 2025 | Carbondale, Colorado | Jeff Wagner | Willow Weaving: Flower-Shaped Basket | Register |
| February 16, 2025 | Carbondale, Colorado | Jeff Wagner | Willow Weaving: Oval Basket | Register |
| March 1, 2025 | Paonia, Colorado | Jenna Bradford | Intro to Natural Dyes | Register |
| March 1 – 2, 2025 | Palisade, Colorado | Jeff Wagner | Willow Weaving Weekend | Register |
| March 15, 2025 | Carbondale, Colorado | Jenna Bradford | Willow Weaving: Wall-Hanging Basket | Register |
| April 18-20, 2025 | Paonia, Colorado | Kelly Moody | Buckskin Tanning Weekend | Register |
| April 19, 2025 | Durango, Colorado | Jenna Bradford | Willow Weaving: 5-Ring Frame Basket | Register |
| May 3, 2025 | Grand Lake, Colorado | Jenna Bradford | Willow Weaving: 5-Ring Frame Basket | Register with Rocky Mountain Folk School |
| May 23-25, 2025 | Paonia, Colorado | Forrest Gilles | Weekend Workshop: Tanning Sheep Hides | Register |
Notes on Cultural Appropriation
For the past decades, pre-industrial skills have been taught amongst North America’s non-indigenous communities at skill share gatherings called “ancestral skills gatherings,” “primitive skills gatherings” or “Earth skills gatherings.” Each of the gatherings is unique, and each is run with varying degrees of consideration for cultural appropriation. At best, these gatherings are wonderful communal spaces where people from all walks of life come together joyfully to explore the skills that humanity relied on until the past one or two centuries. They can be incredible, but sometimes they are short-sighted; one of Groundwork’s past instructors described some gatherings at their worst as “Native American cosplay.”
We recognize that learning ancestral and traditional skills can appropriate indigenous cultures. People with privilege can freely learn skills that were violently suppressed during genocide and assimilation processes. We believe that it’s possible to explore, study, and practice ancestral and traditional skills in respectful ways. How do we do this? At the founding of the school, Jeff Wagner, our executive director, wrote a piece that attempts to define a non-appropriative ethos for the Groundwork Folk School.
Read Groundwork’s Stance On Cultural Appropriation
Meet The Folk School Teachers
Jenna Bradford
Jenna grew up in the Sacramento River delta in California, swimming, climbing trees, searching for animals along the water’s edge, studying their ways, and always looking for excuses to be outside. She received her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Bioethics from Loyola University in Chicago. Before becoming a teacher, Jenna worked on farms in Colorado, designed and sewed clothing, and studyied plants through an herbalism apprenticeship with Wildroot Botanicals and an ethnobotany immersion with Raven’s Roots Naturalist School. Jenna taught 5th and 6th grade at Paonia’s North Fork School of Integrated Studies. She is excited to continue with some of her current students on this adventure. Jenna loves teaching because she loves learning and loves to share that enthusiasm with others.
Forrest Gillies
Forrest was fortunate to be raised at one of the oldest intentional communities, nestled into the red sandstone foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Being surrounded by wilderness, sustainable agriculture and abundant community shaped him into a human inspired to share these gifts with a world starving for land based connection. Guided by the question of how to create and sustain real, viable culture, Forrest found answers in the seeds. After studying Ecological Agriculture: Seeds, Bees & Soil at the Evergreen State College, he discovered the ways in which seed, subsistence agricultural systems and traditional life-ways create the foundational framework for real culture to emerge. Forrest has managed multiple regenerative farm and education projects including Siskiyou Seeds and White Oak Farm, offers nature connection programs for youth and is apprenticing in natural building. Rooted in reverence for the human & more-than-human world, Forrest walks in service to a more beautiful world we all know is possible. Forrest is a certified Wilderness First Responder.
Kelly Moody
Kelly grew up in rural southern Virginia in tobacco country, working at her family’s nursery business. She earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Religious Studies, Anthropology at Christopher Newport University in Virginia in 2009, focusing on globalization of culture and land relationships, environmental ethics and ‘east-west’ comparative philosophies. After that she worked on and ran organic farms, studied with various herbalists, gardeners, permaculturists and ecologists from Vermont to Ohio, North Carolina, California, New Mexico and beyond. She has also spent countless hours in self-study working with plants on public land across the U.S. west. She is the main facilitator behind the Ground Shots Project and Podcast, a work that explores cross-ecological and societal intersections. Kelly is a certified Wilderness First Responder.
Jeff Wagner
After a university education didn’t provide sufficient answers, Jeff began seeking answers to the big questions that weren’t answered by academia: how we might reimagine U.S. society in the age of climate change, and what it means to be a responsible human in an unraveling world. For over a decade, Jeff sought answers outside the mainstream: living at wolf sanctuary in the Colorado mountains, leading NOLS expeditions across North America, and facilitating cross-cultural semesters in the Andes, the Amazon, the Himalaya, and the great Mekong River Basin. Jeff’s biggest focus has been teaching to the cultural roots of environmental issues, and helping students both experience and examine different ways of life that can be applied as cultural activism at home in North America. As a person dedicated to questioning the mindsets stemming from settler-colonialism, Jeff finds inspiration in the communities working to maintain and strengthen relationships with the natural world and with the sources of food, water, clothing, shelter, and meaning. Jeff likes walking slowly, weaving fabric and baskets, and growing beautiful varieties of heirloom seeds. Jeff founded Groundwork to help people pursue the goal of becoming ancestors that their descendants will be proud to tell stories about. Jeff is a certified Wilderness First Responder.