Grants program keeps festival spirit alive

By Elissa Sonnenberg

Long after the last crumb of cornbread is swept from the grounds of the annual Appalachian Festival at Coney Island, the echoes of its mountain music, dance and culture reverberate in schools, community centers and artists' studios throughout Greater Cincinnati.

That's because the Appalachian Community Development Association (ACDA), which has organized the Festival for 24 of its 32 years, also administers a unique grant program that turns event proceeds into seed money. Success for the Festival means success for ACDA's grant recipients - organizations and individuals striving to affirm and enhance the lives of Appalachians and promote pride in Appalachian culture. ACDA has sown nearly $150,000 into worthy local projects since 1990.

Since its formation in 1974, the ACDA, an outgrowth of the Junior League, has had one goal - improve the communities and the social and cultural development of our area's Urban Appalachians. Translating that goal into action requires the efforts of lots of people who've never stepped foot in the mountains.

One grant helped teach inner-city girls about mountain life by putting them to work on a farm. Another is helping bring the dream of a neighborhood cultural heritage center to life. One built community through oral history and artistic performance. Another brought the sounds of the banjo to an East End church for a multi-cultural gospel workshop. The common thread that binds these projects is their spirit - strong, determined and resilient. It is an echo of the past that resonates in the present. A reminder of the Appalachian mountaineers and their migrant ancestors who to this day continue their quest for positive identity. In a society where harsh stereotypes drown out the sweet strains of the dulcimer, their spirit speaks of hope and inspiration.

Appalachian Camps Teach City Kids Mountain Ways

In 1996, Newport's Brighton Center led a project in conjunction with the Licking River Girl Scouts and the Covington Community Center that offered two weeks of day camps for inner-city girls, aged six to 12. Many of the girls from Newport, Dayton and Covington, had never been outside the city. Some girls who had roots in the Appalachian region didn't know it, and even if they did, they weren't necessarily proud of their "hillbilly" heritage.

The one-week camps took more than 100 girls out of the city to Sunrock Farm and the Girl Scouts' facilities in Erlanger. Together, the girls made candles, baked bread, gathered eggs and milked goats. They breathed country air, learned Appalachian dances and saw the stars light up the dark sky.

Teens from youth leadership programs became advisors and teachers. The girls grew closer to each other while learning and sharing experiences of Appalachian culture. "ACDA allowed us to have the camp," says Barb Horsley, Brighton Center's Youth Leadership Specialist. "Our goals were to build an awareness of Appalachian culture, to get the girls out of the city, to strengthen friendships, to give the older girls a chance to use their leadership skills and to have fun. We met our goals."

The day camps were so successful that many of the girls want to return for another chance to live the mountain life, even if it is only for one week.

Pendleton Heritage Center Workers Build Sweat Equity

It's only a shell of a building on Eastern Avenue. Once passed unnoticed by hundreds of commuters each day. But the former railway depot turned recreation center houses the hopes and dreams of a committed group of East End residents intent on preserving their heritage, celebrating their diversity and promoting their future, especially as gentrification brings new residents into their midst.

In a neighborhood in great need of office and meeting space for residents and agencies serving residents, the Pendleton Heritage Center offers a great opportunity to coordinate services and improve offerings to citizens, while preserving and celebrating the East End's history and heritage.

"The Center is an effort to try to explain the cultural heritage to newcomers, and also symbolic of the long-time residents' ability to stay there," says Ariel Miller, Pendleton Heritage Center Treasurer.

A grant from ACDA provides an integral piece of the residents' dream - money to hire a professional foreman to oversee the work of volunteers as they tuck-point, hang storm windows and cabinets, landscape and more. Without the volunteers' "sweat equity," Pendleton Heritage Center could not be completed, as it is scheduled to be, this year. The volunteer effort is one way the Pendleton Heritage Center proves it practices what it preaches - reconciliation and respect. While some volunteers are from middle to upper-class churches, others come from the neighborhood community school and social service agencies.

"The idea is to get people from lots of different backgrounds together by having them work side by side, to show them that cultural and economic differences can be transcended," says Miller.

Jack and Molly Tales Bring Community Back to Roots

Covington Community Center's year-long "Jack in the City" project in 1997 combined the Appalachian traditions of oral history, Jack (and Molly) tales, music, food and fun. "The goal was to raise the awareness and appreciation of Appalachian culture in our community and beyond," explains Jean St. John, Covington Community Center's Community Arts Coordinator.

The large-scale project began as cultural conservationist Lynn David identified mountain traditions that had taken hold in the inner-city - families living in clusters, recipes handed down for generations and the like. Humanities scholar Gurney Norman then worked with the Covington group to define the scope of the project's culminating performance by exploring the mythological meanings behind stories of the questing folk heroes, Jack and Molly. With help from ACDA, the project included local story gatherer Brenda Saylor, who worked with Covington women to help them tell their stories first on paper, then on stage.

"It was a way to give people back their traditions," says St. John. "We wanted to give our community something to be proud of, the tradition of telling stories." The performance of "Jack in the City" at Covington's Carnegie Theater included community members, oral histories and professional actors and musicians. Covington community members, along with hundreds of those in the audience, concluded that Jack and Molly, who long ago migrated with families from the British Isles to the Appalachian Mountains, have followed the migrants to the city, bringing with them a rich and joyful cultural heritage.

Appalachians, African-Americans share music, history

We Shall Overcome. We Shall Not Be Moved. The words call to mind Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, but they also inspired Appalachian coal miners seeking to unionize in earlier decades.

The Urban Appalachian Council's Go Tell It On The Mountains gospel music workshop and concert last year, which was funded in part by ACDA, celebrated the many similarities between African-American and Appalachian spiritual and gospel music in an effort to build bridges of cultural understanding.

Covington's Northern Kentucky Brotherhood and the Mullins Family from Kentucky and Virginia filled Cincinnati's Mt. Carmel Baptist Church with songs of praise and pain, persecution and triumph, crossing generational and racial divides with sweet harmony. Go Tell It On The Mountains included an afternoon workshop for church choir directors, singers and anyone interested in the history of Southern gospel music, as well as an evening concert, in which the groups entertained and inspired their diverse audience. "Go Tell It On The Mountains contributed to UAC's efforts to build community and understanding in Urban Appalachian neighborhoods," says Pauletta Hansel, UAC's Assistant Director of Community Development. "Telling the stories of African-American and Appalachian gospel music, and explaining their common roots was an important way for us to show how cultures can be enhanced by each other's influences."

In each of these projects, building bridges to the past serves as an important step toward a brighter future.

"If we don't know where we come from, then how can we know where we're going?" asks ACDA Board Member and Festival Co-Chair Debbie Bays. "ACDA grants provide an important link for our people and our communities. They help keep the mountain spirit alive."

Elissa Sonnenberg is a second-generation Urban Appalachian and a Cincinnati-based freelance writer.