For Immediate Release                                                                                                 (864) 898-1418

Birchwood Center Races to Meet Match

Pickens, SC -   The push is on, to bring Pickens County's Birchwood Center for Arts and Folklife into a physical reality.

Birchwood, for several years the upstate center for the preservation and promotion of  traditional arts and folk culture, has borrowed many venues in which to bring relevant programs to the public. 

Now a rare “bricks and mortar” match grant offered by the South Carolina Arts Commission gives a chance for the center to make its own space usable.    

The $26,000 grant requires a two-for-one match -- and there's an end-of-May deadline.

So the volunteers who planted Birchwood, in the shadow of Table Rock Mountain, and keep it running, are in a mighty rush.

“We’ve raised about a third of the money, strictly through donations,” says site manager Dot Jackson, one of the center's founding directors. “But to get the full advantage of this opportunity, we’re going after every dollar we can find."

It's a familiar squeeze for non-profits, large and small. “We’re a community service organization, and we're always reluctant to ask for money. We charge admission for very few of  our events -- we prefer to work on a donation basis only. We know first hand how hard times are, for a lot of people.

In its first-ever solicitation mailing, sent this week to those who have asked to be on the mailing list, the situation is explained briefly.

Since its founding in 2000 Birchwood has presented programs in borrowed spaces all over, including the Lodge, Barn and Visitors Center at Table Rock State Park, Oolenoy Community Center, the Pickens County Museum of Art and History, Rosewood Center in Liberty, Littlejohn Community Center in Clemson, McKinney Chapel, Bohemian Café, Wofford College, and in area libraries and schools.

The center's own property, the early 1800s Sutherland-Masters House, probably the Table Rock area's first tourist hostelry, needs a large-scale stabilization to make it safe for visitors again.

Jackson notes, “We have no interest in bringing the place to a style of grandeur or to any condition of elegance or finery it never knew before. It is a plain farm house that has always worked for its living. Our wish is for it to continue affording comfort, inspiration and safety for those who would work, teach, and study here”

Donations for the building fund may be sent to the Birchwood Center for Arts and Folklife, Box 109, Sunset, SC  29685. 

To be placed on the mailing list and to receive a copy of the fundraising piece, phone Pat Edmunds at 868-4538.

Established in 2000 by four elders in the arts and education as a 501 c(3) non-profit, tax-exempt organization, Birchwood, Inc. funds the Birchwood Center for Arts and Folklife, with a mission “to preserve and promote the arts, folklife, history and conservation of the Blue Ridge region by providing classes, workshops and retreats.

Birchwood instructs in matters of practical and artistic value, so that others may become proficient in these areas and perpetuate them for future generations.”

Click here for a recent Pickens Sentinel article about our fundraising efforts.

Click here for an article from the Greenville News about progress on restoring the Sutherland - Masters House.

For additional information, visit the website at  www.birchwoodcenter.org.

The South Carolina Arts Commission provides grants, technical services and leadership to arts organizations, schools and individual artists to preserve and promote the arts across the spectrum of South Carolina’s cultures and forms of expression. Headquartered in Columbia , the Arts Commission draws on the resources of state tax dollars appropriated by the South Carolina General Assembly and the federal government through the National Endowment for the Arts.

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