The UNC Asheville Craft Campus will be the leading undergraduate craft studies program in our nation while re-centering and advancing the American studio craft movement in Asheville and Western North Carolina. We will accomplish this by educating new makers, teachers, scholars, collectors, and advocates who will communicate, strengthen and sustain the power of the handmade object and its rich cultural and economic heritage.

The UNC Asheville Craft Campus will serve as a national model for dynamic interdisciplinary craft education. The Craft Campus facility will be comprised of interconnected state-of-the-art studios in ceramics, glass, sculpture/metal, and wood.

Capitalizing on the location in Western North Carolina and the well-recognized UNC Asheville faculty, we will develop 4-year degree and community outreach programming in accordance with our commitment to invest in the people of North Carolina while supporting and recognizing our strong cultural heritage. This programming will be rooted in the liberal arts, entrepreneurship and the environment and will be responsive to a recent change in craft education that supports decentralization of individual media in favor of collaboration across disciplines.

Graduates of the program will explore their professional and personal lives throughout the state, bringing with them, as makers, teachers, scholars, collectors, and advocates, a value of the handmade object that reflects and sustains the communities in which they live.

Bow cluster brooch with teardrop, by Amy Tavern, Meet the Maker lecture April 4, 2011.