Help us Restore Folk Art and Create New Films

Can you believe it’s already nearly Thanksgiving? The end of the year is creeping up fast, and we’ve been so busy! From our archive to our film team to our overall organization, there is so much to update you on.

Giving Tuesday

We are more than two years out from the 2022 flood, but our archive team is still working hard to recover the extraordinary, one-of-a-kind artifacts from Appalachian history held in our archive. Our archive is known for holding the world's largest collection of film, video, and audio related to Appalachia, but did you know we also have a folk art collection?

Mark your calendars! On Giving Tuesday, December 3, we are asking you to support the Appalshop Archive as we continue to restore items from our collection. Some of the items include:

• A handmade table and set of chairs, designed and crafted by Chester Cornett. Cornett was the subject of the 1981 Appalshop Film Hand Carved (directed by Herb E. Smith). The table has become warped and needs restored, and the chairs will need to be conserved (professionally cleaned with some repair).
• The "Appalshop Chair" designed and crafted by Chester Cornett during the filming of Hand Carved. The chair is engraved with writing across each rail and was mottled by a Coleman campfire burner the night it was finished. Chester Cornett has made chairs for multiple presidents and even hand-delivered one to Richard Nixon in the Oval Office. After filming Hand Carved, filmmakers Herb E. Smith and Elizabeth Barrett purchased the Appalshop Chair on behalf of the organization. 
• A banjo, owned and autographed by Lily May Ledford. Ledford was in the Coon Creek Girls, one of the first all-female string bands to appear on radio. She also received a National Heritage Award in 1985. She gave her banjo to WMMT's Jim Webb, who later donated it to the Appalshop Archive. This instrument will need to be cleaned and restored to make it playable again, and needs a case for storage. This restoration will be completed by the luthiers at Troublesome Creek Guitars. 
• Two wooden sculptures by Fred Carter. Carter was a longtime resident of Clintwood, Virginia, and known for his "Appalachian Art Brut" wooden sculptures, often with themes exposing the ravages of coal mining on both the miners and their environment. One of the sculptures is a self-portrait, entitled "Prometheus." The other is a portrait he made of Hatfield and McCoy. Both sculptures need to be cleaned and buffed.
• Four quilts that were hanging in the Appalshop building. Although these quilts were not damaged by floodwaters, they were exposed to high humidity levels and need to be professionally cleaned. One quilt was created by the family of Aunt Etta Banks, and donated in her memory. Another was quilted by Gail Crider and Angelyn DeBord. A third was created by the quilters from the Appalshop Film Quilting Women. 

The good news is that we have experts in our community capable of performing these restorations. Your generosity will support the estimated costs to repair these items in our collection, and support Archive programs for their future use. These restorations will allow the items to not only be preserved for the Archive, but will return them to a condition that allows them to be exhibited and showcased for public viewing.

Visit our Giving Tuesday page to learn more and to help save these unique folk treasures! 

Films in the Works

Our filmmakers have incredible works in progress. We can’t wait to share the full films next year, but we wanted to give you a little sneak peek into the important stories they are amplifying.

Hannah Adams Asbury is set to release Through Their Own Lens: The Appalachian Media Institute in the coming weeks. This film celebrates the Appalachian Media Institute’s (AMI) 36-year history and its profound impact on the Central Appalachian region and the lives of its interns. Through interviews with former program directors and participants, the film explores the transformative power of youth media, creativity, and self-expression. AMI, established in 1988, has built a lasting legacy of empowering Appalachian youth to take control of their narratives, telling their own stories and those of their communities through the lens of their creativity. 

Oakley Fugate has a film in progress titled Thunder in the Hills. Through this film, Oakley explores gun culture in the Appalachian region, from family heirlooms passed down for almost a hundred years to their modern day impact. 

Madison Buchanan also has a film in progress: Roof Over My Head. This short documentary follows an Appalachian family’s journey through unstable housing. Madison felt it important that in order to make a documentary about housing in the region, she had to be willing to share her own struggles as well. 

In addition to new work, our team is also out in the community telling the Appalshop story. This past week, our Film department crew attended UVA-Wise's Appalachian Heritage Week and hosted a presentation of Appalshop works, new and old! They showcased the 2000's classic Stranger with a Camera, produced by Elizabeth Barret, as well as a five-minute teaser of Madison’s film, Roof Over My Head. Stay tuned for more updates on this film and other films coming soon from our Film department! And special thanks to Jared Sloan in the Office of Student Affairs and Amy Clark, Professor of Communication and Appalachian Studies, for inviting us to be a part of Appalachian Heritage Week.

As with the previous five decades of stories, our filmmakers are challenging narratives and amplifying Appalachian voices and experiences that often go unheard. If you have connections in any of the fields these films touch on, let us know. We’d love to build connections to support our filmmakers further. We can’t wait to share these films with you in the coming year! 

Rural Support Partners

Our organizational health work is still on a roll! If you're a regular reader of our newsletter, you'll know that this year we partnered with Rural Support Partners (RSP), a mission-driven consulting organization rooted in Appalachia committed to supporting rural communities and organizations. 

Our work with RSP is ensuring that Appalshop cultivates the clarity of vision, develops the habits of health, and builds the supportive structures needed to continue our work for another 50 years. 

Toward that end, we had a staff-wide retreat in August where we unpacked and reset our organizational culture. We named what has held us back and what can move us forward, and we studied the patterns of healthy organizations to set a personalized road map beginning with empowered participation. In October, the newly formed leadership team, with Executive Director Tiffany Sturdivant at the helm, met with RSP to redesign our organizational structure. Together, we drafted an intentional structure that reflects our priorities, celebrates our staff capabilities, and honors the innovative ways Appalshop has shown up in our local and regional communities in the past. We also developed clear policies and processes to support organizational health and cultivated workflows that ensure staff voices are heard.

We are thrilled to continue this work over the next year and look forward to providing regular updates!