Explore . Discover . Create . Play . All ages of wonder welcome at Folk Fest on Orcas Island!
Music Workshops
Rafe Pearlman offers a fun and engaging Vocal Playshop on Friday morning that stretches your range of sound and expression. Friday Morning. Rafe is the headline performer on Saturday evening beside the campfire.
Friday afternoon, multi-instrumentalist Joel Gamble offers a workshop on stringed instruments and music theory, bring your own or borrow one of the instructor's. Joel is performing Saturday on electric violin.
Beau Borrero is bringing us African Drumming for a Friday afternoon workshop beside Cascade Lake. Bring your drum or borrow one from the instructor. Beau is a member of Sabu, performing on Saturday.
Saturday, mid-day, the meadow fills with the delightful sounds of Marimba and the Limbach Brothers invite you to try your hand at these beloved instruments.
Instrument Making
Emily Deason is offering a full day frame drum making workshop to create your own drum following Lakota traditions. The full kit of materials and instructions is provided. Workshop is on Friday. Drum making reservations must be made by May 5th to ensure a full hand-crafted materials kit is available.
Joy Hughes is offering a digeridoo making workshop on Saturday morning for ages 8 and up using a sliding pipe technique that can be completed in two hours.
Blacksmithing
Try your hand at the forge! Folk Fest has three Blacksmiths in residence offering classes on hatchet, knife, spoon and BBQ tool making. Instructors are: Emmett Pearsons, Kiel Sloper from Orcas and Vincent Jacques from the Fellowshop on San Juan.
Workshops are on Friday and Saturday, 2-3 hours each. Includes adult sessions and parent/teen options as a family activity.
Fiber Arts
Join us in the Fiber Shed for weaving, tapestry, and spinning with Maria Nutt of Warm Valley Orchard on Orcas and Cathy Vierthaler of Island Knitwear offers a knitting class to create your own wool cap.
Wool and fiber classes are Friday and Saturday.
On Saturday afternoon, Margie Kaplan and friends will be demonstrating quilting. Katey Rissi of Alchemy Arts will offer printmaking on fabric or paper. Hannah Boehm will be demonstrating felted landscapes. Maria Nutt and Cathy Vierthaler will be demostrating spinning, knitting and fiber selection.
Indigenous Hand Crafts & Leatherworking
Jaimie Arnold (Tulalip) and Wilma Gloria (Tulalip) are teaching cedar basketmaking, cedar woven earrings, beading of wristlet and earrings on Friday and Saturday. Material kits and instruction are provided during the workshop, with studio time throughout the fest.
Joshua Alber of the Merry Faerie is teaching leather belt making to craft your own, take home belt. Includes instruction, all materials, stamping and dyeing.
Bushcrafting: Wood Working & Fire Making
Nathan Donnelly is teacing introduction to woodcarving on Friday morning and creating a bow drill for fire making in the afternoon. Nathan is a widely recognized wilderness skills instructor and approaches bishcrafting as a tool kit for sustainable living.
Davis Limbach is teaching intermediate to advanced wooden spoon carving and natural fiber and hide cordage making on Friday.
On Saturday, for the Kids Camp, Nathan is offering bushcrafting activities as part of the trail-based oreinteering activities in the afternoon.
Ceramics: Raku Firing
Join Maria Michaelson and crew from AlchemyArts on San Juan for a raku firing workshop. You will glaze a bisqueware cup and add it to a group raku firing. First session starts at 3pm. After your piece emerges from the fire and cools, it will be yours a take home and enjoy.
Learn more about Alchemy Arts here.
Herbalism
Friday: Reishi Strauss (she/her) is an herbalist, mycologist, and medicine maker with over 10 years of experience identifying, wildcrafting, and making medicine with mushrooms and plants. She owns and operates her medicinal mushroom medicine business – Earth & Spirit Botanicals – which seeks to heal the planet & her people with sustainably wildcrafted and regeneratively cultivated herbal & fungal medicines. It is her passion and joy to share the magic of mushrooms and plants with others
Reishi is teaching plant identification and properties in the morning, and an herbal wildcraft rpoduct making class in the afternoon.
Learn more about Reishi's work here.
Saturday: Emily Deason is teaching a medicinal salve making workshop in the morning, appropriate for ages 10 and up.
Folk Dancing: Contra and Square
Friday evening in Eastsound, Folk Fest is hosting a lively 2 hour Contra and Square dance with Caller Amy of Seattle on lead. A how-to for beginners starts at 6:30, the Dance begins at 7pm.
Location is the Old Gym at Orcas Public Schools.
Folk Dancing: Dances of Universal Peace
These dances are community circle dances that share traditional folk dance styles from around the world and honor a variety of spiritual traditions. Lead is Libby Garcia who has been hosting Dance of Universal Peace and Contra Folk Dances in Orcas for years.
Folk Dancing is free to registered guests on Saturday morning at Camp Moran, starting at 10am. Included with your day pass.
Poetry with Jill McCabe Johnson
Jill's 'Deep Listening' workshop will include time outside doing deep listening to influence one's writing. Time for trail walks, reflection, writing and sharing takes place on Saturday afternoon beside Lake Cascade.
Jill writes poetry and narrative nonfiction, plus occasional forays into fiction, with a deep social conscience and even deeper roots in nature and the natural sciences. Her aims and interests lie at the intersection of protecting the endangered and leaning into what's just and beautiful in this world. See more about Jill here.
Homesteading & Sustainability
Come learn about natural farm animal care with Ally Rugge of Mother Cluckers (San Juan), off grid tool making and care with Guisepe Spadafora (San Juan), Seed Heritage with Taja Wicks (Orcas), and how to make a wooden Bat House with Nic Coldren of the Fellowshop (San Juan).
Skills for rural and urban sustainable living.
Kids Activities
Pop-Up Arts Tent
Alchemy Arts and Lizzy Herbert are offering hands-on kids art and craft opportunites on Saturday. The workshop fee includes materials to make several projects. Something for all ages, 5 and up. Opens at 10am with activities through 4pm.
Orienteering
A team of outdoor games leaders and bushcraft specialists will be engaging kids 8 and up in the afternoon for a trail and skillcraft activity starting at 2pm. Activity sites are scattered through the forest with tokens or instructor goal sites that are discovered by learning map navigation and nature skills.