
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 16, 1991                   TAG: 9104160519
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHY NOT HOLD FOLK FESTIVAL AT EXPLORE?

FOR 17 YEARS, Ferrum College has been sponsor and host for the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival. The annual event has become hugely popular. Several thousand people throng the Franklin County campus on October's fourth Saturday to see basket making, quilting, cane carving, rail splitting, millstone dressing, blacksmithing, butchering, tobacco twisting and soap making. Besides crafts, there are music and food, all in the Appalachian tradition.

It appears, however, that the 1991 festival will be the last at Ferrum. "Basically, we've just run out of space," says the college president, Jerry Boone. The institution itself is adding more buildings; and folklife activities sprawl all over the campus, causing wear and tear that take months to repair.

Where will the festival go in 1992? Can it survive the move? "I do not believe another suitable location can be found in the entire region," suggests Dr. J. Francis Moore, a local historian.

But maybe it can. The Explore Project, closer to a metropolitan area, has ample room for activities and exhibits. Depending on the site, it could also have access. Explore, still searching for its identity and for crowd attractions, could benefit greatly from hosting the already-established festival. It certainly would boost Explore's mission of bringing the region's past to life. Bern Ewert, the project's director, says Ferrum has already contacted him about the possibility.

True, Explore lacks a large building such as the Ferrum gymnasium that many festival craftsmen - unaccustomed to displaying their wares and skills anywhere else - have found comfortable. It has the Roanoke River, but not the pond where a coon-dog swimming race is held.

Otherwise, the festival at Explore - say, the McDonald property reachable via Routes 24 and 634 - seems doable. Planning to handle traffic would be vital. But on Explore property would be plenty of room for activities, parking and facilities to help the event succeed. It would also be closer to the Roanoke Valley's population center and to the interstate. At Explore, the festival would have room to grow.

How long it might last, and grow, is another question. What helps give the event its character is that it does not tolerate displays of non-traditional crafts. It wants people who can explain how a folk skill was handed down to them and why.

Moore notes that practitioners of the old crafts are disappearing; some have died since the festival started back in the 1970s. The new generation in Appalachia is not picking up these skills. It takes effort just to keep the older generation coming back. The festival is not a historical event, Moore has said, for "These crafts are going on right now. But a lot of them are going to be historical soon."

Understandably, Franklin County would not be happy to see the festival move out. Better, though, that it survive elsewhere than come to a premature end. It may soon enough be the stuff of history.

***CORRECTION***

Published correction ran on April 19, 1991 in the Editorial Section\ Correction

Francis Amos is a historian associated with the Blue Ridge Folklife Institute at Ferrum College. Roddy Moore is director of the Blue Ridge Institute, which runs the festival. Their names were confused in an editorial April 16.

Memo: correction

by CNB