Appalachian Heritage Crafters
Appalachian Heritage Crafters (AHC) is a crafts cooperative based in Murphy, North Carolina, that was created as a local response to plant closings that unemployed over a thousand people during 1999. The founding members of AHC recognized that their communities had a great, untapped resource--all the local people that have both modern and traditional craftmaking skills. AHC was formed as a way to bring those people together and provide an opportunity for sustainable, locally-driven economic development that preserves and promotes Appalachian heritage and culture.
Appalachian
Heritage Crafters website
Evaluating CPC's and AHC's Work
AHC: Early planning and visions
From the Summer 2001 edition of Mountain Views
Just outside Murphy, North Carolina, you’ll find a log cabin advertising local crafts. Open the screen door, and you enter a room filled with crafts – stained glass hanging on the windows; lovely pottery, woodwork, and baskets arrayed on handmade furniture; quilts and paintings hanging on the wall; handmade jewelry in a display on the counter.
Everywhere you look are handmade crafts, and the warm wood of the cabin and the old woodstove make you feel like you’ve stepped back in time to a simpler, easier era.
Appalachian
Heritage Crafters (AHC), founded by craftspeople in and around
Cherokee County, NC, is a grassroots organization dedicated to
preserving and promoting Appalachian crafts and heritage. AHC
was founded in February 2000 by local women who were laid off
during a 1999 Levi Strauss plant closing; the group was started
as a way to join together to earn income and achieve economic
self-sufficiency following the closing.
AHC has grown beyond its original group of crafters and now includes a wide variety of people. Current regional members include crafters and artisans that are skilled in the areas of pottery, woodworking, stained glass, painting, metalsmithing, spinning, ceramics, sewing, quilting, and many others, all producing quality handmade items.
AHC organized and sponsored three heritage craft shows in 2000. These shows gave local crafters the opportunity to display and sell their handmade crafts to the public. Crafter members earned a total of $9,000 from these three shows.
Their biggest project – opening a retail outlet for local crafters – was launched this spring, when AHC rented a log cabin on Hwy 64 in Murphy, NC. Members volunteered to clean and refurbish the building, purchase display fixtures, develop store policies and procedures, and staff the store. The store opened for business on May 25, 2001. It was entirely planned – and is entirely staffed and managed – by member volunteers.
Opening the store was a huge step for AHC. By the time it opened, members had been working towards the store opening for more than fifteen months. Membership had blossomed from six original members in February 2000 to 76 members in July 2001. Members have built a solid organization – one with several active committees, a solid fundraising record, and a pending application for nonprofit 501(c)(3) status.
And the store has been successful. In its first two months of operation, the store grossed over $10,000. Of that, around $1400 went back to the organization (to cover the costs of operating the store), while $8,600 went directly to people living in one of the state’s most economically distressed areas.
Appalachian Heritage Crafters is a wonderful example of local people coming together to create economic opportunities for themselves – opportunities that individuals would be unable to create on their own. It is also a fine example of economic development that is controlled by local people, inspired by local heritage, and where the money made stays in the local community, in the pockets of the people who are doing the work.
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