Brooks: In Minneapolis, empty space downtown makes room for a new folk school

Artist and educator Anna Lindall looked at her neighbors and saw teachers.

The city of Minneapolis looked at vacant downtown real estate and saw classrooms.

The result is the Center for People and Craft, an urban folk school opening soon in Loring Park.

Your neighbor might have something to teach that you want to learn. Maybe it’s whittling. Maybe Somali finger weaving. Maybe your neighbor grew indigo in a backyard dye garden and they’re willing to teach you how to dye your own yarn.

“Our goal is to celebrate the rich cultural diversity of Minneapolis and the many traditions that thrive in this particular place on earth — from craft, ritual, and music to dance, storytelling, and foraging,” Lindall explained in her introduction to a project that was made possible through a great deal of volunteer labor and a grant from the city’s Vibrant Storefronts initiative.

You can get a sneak peek at the school and its new home near the Walker Art Center — five airy classrooms on the second floor of the education building behind St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral — at an open house this weekend.

These are divisive times. The Center for People and Craft wants to bring us together.

Lindall spent years teaching Nordic handcraft. There’s a question she asks her students at the end of each workshop.

“You’ve just spent two hours carving wood. How do you feel?”

Calm, her students would tell her, if they had to pick one word. Connected. Hopeful.

You may have heard of the North House Folk School in Grand Marais, where you can learn to tan a hide or weave a blanket or hammer molten iron in a blacksmithing class. The whole point of the folk school movement is to celebrate traditional crafts and culture. An urban craft school just means there are even more crafts and cultures to get to know.

“We are such a multicultural society. That’s who Minnesota is, and it’s such a wonderful and exciting thing,” Lindall said. “There are so many people in Minnesota who have so many wonderful and exciting traditions to share.”

Other grant recipients will be showing off the creative uses they’ve found for empty spaces this weekend.

Minneapolis residents have been practicing their dance moves all month and on Saturday they’ll gather at True North Studio on Hennepin for a mass reenactment of the “Thriller” dance. True North Studio x Curioso Coffee collaborated to set up the new arts collaborative at 3001 Hennepin Av. in Seven Points. For more information about Thrill Uptown, click here.

Flavor World, which snagged a Vibrant Storefronts grant last year, is hosting “Art Share” — an open mic-style art show-and-tell.

Lindall grew up in a family of crafters, steeped in Icelandic and Swedish heritage. Her mother was a fiber artist. Her grandfather was a weaver and leatherworker.

She’s taught classes on Nordic handcraft at the North House school and the American Swedish Institute and is a resident artist at Great River School in St. Paul. She’d thought about launching an urban folk school, but turning handcraft into “this hustling startup business, it didn’t feel right.”

When she’s not teaching a class, she’s signing up for one. It’s good for a teacher, she says, to be reminded how it feels to be a beginner.

“Lots of people have the idea that you need to be good at something in order to enjoy it. I actually specifically love taking classes in new skills that challenge and stretch me,” she said. “In the past year, I’ve learned to build a chair, learned some basic blacksmithing, and tried out indigo dying. Trying new things helps me discover new forms of expression and keeps me curious.”

The Center for People and Craft is still lining up instructors and class schedules and looking for donors willing to chip in tools, funding and maybe a good coffeemaker as the folk school gets off the ground.

“Yes, it’s about craft. But first and foremost, it’s about caring for each other across generations and cultures,” Lindall said. “There’s a reason the name is the Center for People and Craft. It’s people first.”

The Center for People and Craft’s open house is 1-4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25, at 519 Oak Grove St. in Minneapolis.