<< Back 7/17/02 Friendship Center becomes home for festival and its participants By Cristina Reitz If not for the sign on the outside of the new Folkmoot Friendship Center, it would look exactly like every other ancient school in the area. But on the inside, it is clear that what was once Hazelwood Elementary is now a home for a festival of international proportions. The hallways are lined with posters, tapestries, and plaques accrued from all the groups that have participated in the festival. In the entryway are shelves lined with boxes for the groups’ mail and all the rooms are filled with beds made and ready to go. For the past 18 years, Folkmoot International has used Waynesville Middle School as a makeshift Festival center. It served its purpose well enough, providing rooms, showers, a cafeteria, a gym and even a pay phone. So why go to all the trouble of undertaking such a huge renovation project? The answer is permanence. “Everything has more permanence to it,” says Folkmoot Executive Director Jackie Bolden, “which is better for [the performers] and better for us.” Despite the great cost of renovation, which Bolden cited as one of the greatest disadvantages to the center, every bit of the money put into the building is going to be around for the festival’s use the next year. Even though the middle school was very generous with its accommodations, it was, as Bolden says, first and foremost a home to a school. Everything done at WMS had to be undone as soon as the festival was over. The Folkmoot Friendship Center is home to a festival and a community which allows for the permanent installation of whatever amenities Folkmoot sees fit. While there are some obvious advantages to the new center — it looks like a festival center, it’s completely under Folkmoot authority — most of the benefits go easily overlooked by people not familiar with the middle school. Little things like international symbols for the bathrooms and permanent no-smoking signs are subtle changes that can make all the difference. Instead of one pay phone, the new center has three local phones in separate booths with the country codes posted above them. There is also a seated waiting area as well as numerous “social stations” around the building. These are areas with tables and chairs where groups can sit and talk or play games. The center also has at least five computers with Internet access, which had been highly sought after by groups in the past. In the rooms at the middle school, one mirror was propped against a wall and the only place to sit was on the beds. Here, three mirrors have been mounted on the walls and each room is equipped with a blackboard and corkboard, to post schedules, and a table and chairs. This year, there are some bunk-beds as well, which helps with the center’s second major disadvantage — fewer rooms. The middle school had half a dozen more rooms than the Folkmoot Friendship Center. Even so, another advantage of the center helps to balance the lack of space. The beds don’t have to move. Bolden said most people just don’t know how incredibly difficult it is to ship all those beds around. At the Folkmoot Friendship Center they are permanent, which is good not only for Folkmoot but for the community as well. During the time that Folkmoot is not in session, the building will serve as a community center and in the case of a fire, flood or snowstorm, those beds could be used for residents. There are a variety of community activities already planned for the center when Folkmoot ends. Though not in the books, it is a good possibility that the building will host square dances, a community band, Spotlights Youth Theatre and even a wedding reception. With all the possibilities the Friendship Center offers to residents, it’s no wonder that the community had such a big part in the renovation process. The total cost of the new center is between $400-500,000, but without the help of so many volunteers it’s hard to imagine what the price could have been. Everything was done by volunteers except the showers and the cafeteria, and the people who helped ranged from board members to people with no affiliation to Folkmoot at all, says Bolden. Each board member was responsible for one segment, whether it was a few rooms, a hall or stairwell. On any given day, several members could be seen bustling around the new facility up to their elbows in soap or paint. Other people turned helping Folkmoot into projects of their own. Eli Scott, who last year, at barely 15, had the distinction of being Folkmoot’s youngest staff member, turned helping the center into an Eagle Scout Project. It took him awhile to come up with a project, but when someone finally suggested Folkmoot, Scott says he wondered why it had not crossed his mind. His own involvement with Folkmoot made helping with the center the perfect project. In a week his plan was written up and signed by both scout leaders and Folkmoot, and by early May he began his work to develop a garden/rest area. Scott got bench plans from the Haywood County Library and Haywood Builders donated the needed materials. With the help of two other scouts, the garden was essentially finished by the end of June. Even if it’s not related to his scout project, Scott says, he plans to go back and plant flowers as well. “I think Folkmoot is important because it’s international, but it’s also very local as well,” says Scott. Just like the festival itself, the new center will provide not just for international guests but for the people who live here the rest of the year. It will be a temporary home to a festival each summer, but a permanent home to a community, and that is what really distinguishes the Folkmoot Friendship Center and makes it worth the trouble it took to establish a home away from the middle school.