A Letter From Our Director
The Driftless Folk School is a community of lifelong learners cultivating personal and cultural resilience through hands-on educational experiences.
December 2023
Viroqua, Wisconsin
Dear Friends of the Driftless Folk School -
2023 was by all measures an exceptional year for the Driftless Folk School. This year we offered more classes than ever before, which were attended by the largest ever number of class participants, who came from a wide area of the Midwest and beyond. Under the leadership of an energetic volunteer governance circle, the Driftless Folk School welcomed two dedicated and talented new staff members - Registrar Andi Bruce and Outreach Coordinator Lynsey Moritz - who dove into their new roles with professional polish and artistic flair. Together, this team pioneered a new class venue at the People’s Food Coop in La Crosse and staged a string of well-attended community events, ranging from barn dances at the La Farge Community Hall to the 11th Annual Driftless Spoon Gathering in September. In July, we welcomed instructors and community members to our new campus site in Viroqua for a joyous Community Celebration and dedication of the Peper Memorial Wagon, in memory of DFS founder Dan Peper.
This banner year continues the strong growth that DFS has seen since 2020, when most classes were canceled due to the COVID pandemic. As the world has reflected upon and responded to the trauma and disruption of that time, more and more people from our region and beyond have sought out the kind of skills, knowledge, and community that the Driftless Folk School was established to foster. In 2015, when DFS adopted a new mission statement that emphasized “cultivating personal and cultural resilience” as our core purpose, few could have guessed how quickly the need for “personal and cultural resilience” would become an urgent priority for the whole society. Many have come to recognize the critical value of the skills and knowledge that our instructors preserve and share through their classes in a time when so much that we have taken for granted suddenly seemed less certain. Perhaps more profoundly, many have also sought out the hands-on, community-based learning experiences offered by DFS as an urgently needed restorative counterbalance to a daily life and social world that are increasingly mediated through screens. Put this way, Driftless Folk School classes and events offer nothing less than an opportunity to recenter our lives in relationship to nature and to one another and to reconnect with what it means to be human.
As the year ends, we are filled with gratitude for our volunteers, for our instructors and staff, and for everyone who has participated in a Driftless Folk School class or event. We are also grateful to everyone who has made a financial contribution to support this work, and we would like to invite you to join this important group! A donation to the Driftless Folk School helps to insure that these skills, knowledge, and events remain available and affordable and allows us to continue to cultivate personal and cultural resilience into the future.
THANK YOU to everyone who has supported this work with contributions large and small. If you haven’t yet, please consider making a gift this year to help us continue this important work. And we look forward to seeing you at a DFS class or event in 2024!
In Gratitude -
Jacob Hundt
Director of Driftless Folk School & Thoreau College
Driftless Folk School is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization (EIN 51-0573715) and donations are tax deductible. Checks made out to “Driftless Folk School” can be sent to 224 E Highway 56 , Viroqua WI 54665 or donations can be made online via PayPal by clicking the “Donate” button at www.drifltessfolkschool.org
