Minnesota's Legacy

Overlooking the Grand Marais Harbor in Northern Minnesota is a school for all students of life. North House Folk School Program Director Jessa Frost describes their work of reconnecting people with traditional crafts in cooperative group settings.

Creators and Guests

AW
Producer
Amira Warren-Yearby
BA
Producer
Britt Aamodt

What is Minnesota's Legacy?

Minnesota's Legacy showcases the organizations and the people who have benefited from Minnesota’s Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment in sound-rich 90-second segments.

Opening: This is Minnesota's Legacy: A look at the organizations and people who have benefitted from Minnesota's unique Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment

Scandinavian folk music

Amira Warren-Yearby: Have you ever wanted to learn how to build a boat, blacksmith, or bake homemade sourdough bread in a wood-fire oven?

Sound of sawing and hammering wood, kneading dough, woodfire oven

Jessa Frost: These are the kinds of crafts that we teach.

Warren-Yearby: That's Jessa Frost, Program Director of the North House Folk School. While these activities may seem like hobbies that emerged during the pandemic, North House has been teaching them for years. Jessa explains that they help reconnect people to lost traditions and skills.

Sounds of people talking

Frost: craft work is really core to the human experience, that we oftentimes have lost track of in our modern society.

Warren-Yearby: things like basketry…

Frost: That's a really popular subject for us.

Scandinavian folk music

Warren-Yearby: North House focuses on traditional crafts that use natural elements from the region.

Frost: Materials like birch bark and willow, especially because you can find those things in Minnesota and you can harvest them.

Warren-Yearby: Operating support from the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund helps North House Folk School fulfill its mission.

Frost: people from all over Minnesota and truly all over the world come all the way to Grand Marais, Minnesota to learn from one another.

Closing: Minnesota's Legacy is a production of AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, more at ampers dot org