NCEC in the News!
Becky Anderson:
HandMade in America and the Crafts Culture of Western North Carolina
Researched and written by Ethanie Walentuk
Entrepreneurial Innovation in the Arts, sponsored by the BELL (Building Entrepreneurial Learning for Life) initiative, worked to bring the advice and expertise of successful arts entrepreneurs to UNCG students with nine special programs in the spring 2008 semester. At the session on Wednesday 2 April, we welcomed Rebecca Anderson, founder of HandMade in America. The non-profit organization, established in 1995, promotes the economic development of the Western North Carolina region by utilizing its crafts and agricultural heritage as a profitable industry. HandMade in America has brought a strong economy back to the mountain region of North Carolina during a time of staggering manufacturing and textile losses, and it has helped to preserve the cultural heritage of the region while promoting tourism to boost economic growth. Becky Anderson recounted the history of HandMade and shared some valuable advice on business practices and crafts promotion during her BELL Forum presentation.
HandMade was established based upon a proposal from the Pew Charitable Trust, a Philadelphia-based non-profit foundation dedicated to the promotion of arts, culture, and other civic goals. Pew had posed a simple question, sent to mid-population cities nationwide, with an offer of $400,000 over three years to work towards an answer: “How would you affect civic change?” Anderson fatefully retrieved this bit of paper from a county manager’s trash bin while working at the Asheville Chamber of Commerce and immediately recognized the proposal’s potential. As Director of Economic Development for the Asheville Chamber, Anderson and her colleagues were aware of an impending downturn in the state’s economy in mid-nineties, and she saw the Pew challenge as the perfect vehicle to renew and sustain economic growth in Western North Carolina despite the forecasts of an upcoming slowdown. Anderson knew the objective couldn’t be achieved through manufacturing since the furniture and textile industries were already weakening nor technology since in the nineties the digital divide was still formidable, and only the richest mountain cities had Internet access. The answer she had for Pew Charitable Trust was to effect civic change by emphasizing the heritage and history that was already so strong in the region: that of the handmade object. With four thousand craftspeople residing in the mountains of North Carolina and a rich culture based on handmade craft, she knew the goal was attainable.
Having won the support of Pew Charitable Trust, HandMade in America was incorporated as a nonprofit, and Anderson signed on as Executive Director. One of her first objectives was calculating the economic contribution of craft in the region. With help from Appalachian State University’s John A. Walker College of Business, a groundbreaking economic impact study was conducted that found that the handmade object economy totaled $122,000,000 annually. Its impact on the region was considerable, and the study unquestioningly proved the economic viability of HandMade’s goals.
To aid the crafts community, the organization swiftly began implementing programs that included providing entrepreneurial training for craftspeople, establishing crafts curriculum in schools, and promoting heritage-based tourism in Western North Carolina. HandMade research had found that sixty-seven percent of the region’s handmade objects are sold to tourists, so Anderson was determined to bring more visitors to the area. Rural citizens were initially wary of tourism programs. “Trash and traffic were two of the nicer terms I heard,” Anderson humorously recalls when speaking of meetings with locals to discuss some of HandMade’s ideas for tourism programs. To gain local support, Anderson knew she must put the citizens in charge. A community-based tourism program was implemented that shared the culture and beauty of the mountain region with visitors but protected locals’ pre-designated secret places. HandMade chose to forego traditional travel brochures in favor of more comprehensive, descriptive guidebooks that allow the traveler to create a trail for themselves through the region to take in the crafts, gardens, and agriculture that interest them. Craft Heritage Trails of Western North Carolina was first printed in spring 1996, followed in 2002 by the Farms, Gardens, and Countryside Trails guidebook. HandMade’s guidebook series has defined community-based tourism, increasing sales for craftspeople along the trails by twenty-eight percent and serving as a model for twenty-two other states’ tourism programs.
Another important goal for HandMade in America is environmental preservation. The ties of art and earth are strong, and “green” living fits right in to the Western North Carolina culture. In 1999, the organization teamed up with the Blue Ridge Resource Conservation and Development Council and Mayland Community College to create Energy Xchange--a craft studio space that is built atop an abandoned landfill in Burnsville, North Carolina, and is powered by the methane gas produced by the waste beneath the soil. There are now three such sites in the mountain region, which are not only environmentally friendly, but also function as business incubators for upcoming crafts artists who rent the studio space from HandMade. The methane is used to power glass furnaces, kilns, metalsmithing forges, and greenhouses; and equates to taking about 22,000 vehicles off North Carolina roads in terms of energy conservation.
Under Anderson’s direction, HandMade in America has achieved great strides for the economy of Western North Carolina and has received national praise for many of the exceptional projects it has created. Anderson was named one of “America’s Top Twenty Visionaries” by the US News and World Report in 1999, and in 2003, Worth Magazine ranked HandMade in America one of the top twenty-four arts non-profits in the nation, saying it represents “the best of our country’s culture.” Although Anderson has stepped down as Executive Director as of 1 March 2008, she plans to continue working as a private consultant for the HandMade model of community and economic development, hoping to bring to other areas of the country the positive changes she has delivered in the mountains of North Carolina.
This case study was conducted in April 2008 by Ethanie Walentuk, a News and Documentary major in the Media Studies Department. Her work was supported by a special grant from Dr. Timothy Johnston, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
These case studies were compiled and archived as part of the former BELL (Building Entrepreneuruial Learning for Life) Program's Entrepreneurial Innovation in the Arts (EIA) initiative to provide a library of examples of how artists in many different fields have achieved success. The cases were researched and written by UNCG students.