AN IMMERSIVE EDUCATION IN FOLK CRAFT & SONG
Folkways is a school, artisan studio, and creative container for land-based craft, song, & story. We cherish the beauty that human ingenuity creates through thoughtful and reciprocal relationships with place, culture, and each other. Our teaching is rooted in the tradition of mentorship and includes 2 core learning tracks: shorter weekend workshops and individualized solo & small group offerings. We share through fun, imaginative, hands-on experience as well as through conversation and inquiry into history, ethics, practice, and play.
Natalie Suzanne and the guest instructors of Folkways teach from their embodied experience of living close to the land and their many years of devoted practice. Broken into its component parts of “folk” and “way,” the word “folkways” has Germanic etymological roots and is colloquially understood to mean the ways or customs of the people. Folkways is expansive in its understanding of this namesake word and acknowledges the vast and beautiful body of the world and local traditions that are not taught in our school. We do not hold this name to claim all these traditions, but to step more deeply into collaboratively sharing and cultivating culture in relationship to the land on which we currently live.
WORKSHOPS & SONG CIRCLES
Learn bookbinding, leatherwork, basketry, and many other foundational ancestral skills through Folkways shorter course offerings. These classes range from half-day introductions to four-day intensives.
MENTORSHIP
Mentorship is the heart of all Folkways programs. For those interested in creating a unique individual or small group mentoring journey with Folkways, or in organizing a private class, please contact us.
IMMERSION PROGRAM
This 9 month immersion meets one weekend a month for a deeper dive into various craft offerings, including natural dyes, earthen art supplies, carving, cooking and so much more. This program is currently TBA.
ABOUT NATALIE SUZANNE
Natalie Suzanne (she/her) is an educator, artisan, and musician who has spent the last 20 years deeply immersed in land-based culture. Until moving to the Santa Monica Mountains, Natalie spent ten years as a long-term land steward and director of the Wild Series at Quail Springs Permaculture, a 450-acre off-grid environmental education center in the high desert of the Cuyama Valley. She is grateful for the immense gift of years of a devoted daily relationship with this vibrant land, her most important teacher.
Natalie has years of embodied experience in a multitude of land-based crafts and music and seeks to create, tend and share beauty. She specifically gives thanks to the Chumash people for their wisdom and tending of many of the lands that have grown her into a person in her adult life. She is additionally indebted to her teachers and collaborators, who continue to walk with integrity, respect, reciprocity, and love.
Natalie was a member of the internationally acclaimed women's vocal ensemble KITKA for 4 years and has studied and sung with folk-music masters from Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, the Republic of Georgia, Greece, Morocco and Iran. She is in love with harmony and folklore and just released her first full-length album, ENCHANTMENT.
As an artisan, she has taught for School of the Sacred Wild, Buckeye Gathering, Acorn Gathering, Spiritweavers, the Oak Granary, Quail Springs, and more. She is a mentor and teacher at Manzanita School. Natalie holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from the University of Evansville and has spent time in avant-garde Grotowski-based laboratory theatre work in Poland and the U.S. She spent three transformative years as an ensemble member of Double Edge Theatre, exploring the possibilities of the body as a creative vessel through extreme athleticism, circus, puppetry, song, poetry, language, and nature.
Some of her favorite non-human friends are wild rose, California poppy, hummingbird, deer, mountain lion, and rain.
