Groundwork Folk School

Willow Basketry

Willow is a fun traditional weaving material that grows across the Northern Hemisphere. Groundwork’s basketry classes teach the foundations of northern European weaving styles, from harvest to finished basket.

Basketry Classes

Hide Tanning

Animal hides are often seen as a waste product from meat production. Groundwork’s hide tanning classes take you through the processes of natural tanning, producing finished leather and sheepskin rugs.

Hide Tanning Classes

Fiber Arts

From wool processing to spinning yarn, from natural dyes to felting, our fiber arts classes offer an alternative to the industrial textile industry.

Fiber Arts Classes

Backstrap Weaving

Backstrap weaving is a form of weaving that creates complex patterns without a loom. Instead, the weaver’s body offers tension one end of the warp threads. All you need is a few sticks and some string. This type of weaving has many origins around the world, but the best-known examples are from Guatemala and Peru.

No Current Classes

Longer Workshops

Groundwork offers longer classes from two to seven days in length. Some of these combine multiple skills, while others are intensives in a single skill.

Summer 2026 Coming Soon!

Custom Workshops – Same Tuition

Design your own workshop with Groundwork’s teachers! For private classes, tuition levels can be comparable to public offerings, since we don’t need to advertise or rent venues.

Inquire About Custom Workshops

Jenna Bradford

Jenna grew up in the Sacramento River delta in California, swimming, climbing trees, searching for animals along the water’s edge, studying their ways, and always looking for excuses to be outside. She received her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Bioethics from Loyola University in Chicago. Before becoming a teacher, Jenna worked on farms in Colorado, designed and sewed clothing, and studyied plants through an herbalism apprenticeship with Wildroot Botanicals and an ethnobotany immersion with Raven’s Roots Naturalist School. Jenna taught 5th and 6th grade at Paonia’s North Fork School of Integrated Studies. She is excited to continue with some of her current students on this adventure. Jenna loves teaching because she loves learning and loves to share that enthusiasm with others.

Allie Olson

Craft has been a constant for most of Allie’s life. Her mom taught her to sew when she was seven and the craft has grown into a passion that encompasses creativity, body positivity, and care for the planet. Allie creates pine needle baskets, weaves, sews, and uses plants to naturally dye cloth and fiber. Allie spent many years working with sewing pattern design. She co-founded Indiesew (a marketplace for indie sewing patterns) in 2013, and managed that company until late 2019. Allie also sells her own pattern line online here. Beyond being a crafter, weaver, dyer, and sewist, Allie is a passionate warrior for Earth. Most of her time outside of her studio is spent outdoors gardening, trail running, or skiing.

Kelly Moody

Kelly grew up in rural southern Virginia in tobacco country, working at her family’s nursery business. She earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Religious Studies, Anthropology at Christopher Newport University in Virginia in 2009, focusing on globalization of culture and land relationships, environmental ethics and ‘east-west’ comparative philosophies. After that she worked on and ran organic farms, studied with various herbalists, gardeners, permaculturists and ecologists from Vermont to Ohio, North Carolina, California, New Mexico and beyond. She has also spent countless hours in self-study working with plants on public land across the U.S. west. She is the main facilitator behind the Ground Shots Project and Podcast, a work that explores cross-ecological and societal intersections. Kelly is a certified Wilderness First Responder.

Jeff Wagner

After a university education didn’t provide sufficient answers, Jeff began seeking answers to the big questions that weren’t answered by academia: how we might reimagine U.S. society in the age of climate change, and what it means to be a responsible human in an unraveling world. For over a decade, Jeff sought answers outside the mainstream: living at wolf sanctuary in the Colorado mountains, leading NOLS expeditions across North America, and facilitating cross-cultural semesters in the Andes, the Amazon, the Himalaya, and the great Mekong River Basin. Jeff’s biggest focus has been teaching to the cultural roots of environmental issues, and helping students both experience and examine different ways of life that can be applied as cultural activism at home in North America. As a person dedicated to questioning the mindsets stemming from settler-colonialism, Jeff finds inspiration in the communities working to maintain and strengthen relationships with the natural world and with the sources of food, water, clothing, shelter, and meaning. Jeff likes walking slowly, weaving fabric and baskets, and growing beautiful varieties of heirloom seeds. Jeff founded Groundwork to help people pursue the goal of becoming ancestors that their descendants will be proud to tell stories about. Jeff is a certified Wilderness First Responder.