Arrowmont is not an attraction, and this page says so plainly: it is a working residential school of arts and crafts — the oldest craft school in Tennessee — where potters, woodworkers, textile artists and metalsmiths come for week-long workshops and residencies. Its roots are a 1912 Pi Beta Phi settlement school that taught mountain children and sold their families' crafts; that settlement-school origin is Gatlinburg's founding arts story, and the school stands on the Parkway in the middle of the town it helped teach to make things. What a visitor can do: walk the grounds, see the galleries and exhibitions when open, and take the history seriously. What you cannot do is treat it as a drop-in amusement — the films, made by students and documentarians, show a campus at work.

Watch: first looks

3 videos · summaries from the actual guides

The Importance of Accessible Art at Arrowmont (Gatlinburg, Tennessee) - Tennessee Valley Uncharted

Tennessee Valley Uncharted

Tennessee Valley Uncharted on what Arrowmont does to people: a former high school English teacher tells how a workshop taken 32 years ago rerouted his life into glass and building - and why a place where beginners and masters feel equally safe to be vulnerable keeps pulling students back.

Key takeaways
  • Workshops welcome absolute beginners alongside experienced artists
  • Students return for decades - one took his first class 32 years ago
  • The setting is meant to make creative risk feel safe

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts Revesited | Tennessee Crossroads | Episode 3010.1

Tennessee Crossroads

Tennessee Crossroads revisits Arrowmont in 2016: just off the busy Parkway, a quiet campus that began as a Pi Beta Phi settlement school in 1912 and grew into a nationally renowned arts center - inside a sculpture class that builds an armature and finishes the piece in five days.

Key takeaways
  • Founded 1912 as a Pi Beta Phi settlement school
  • Now a nationally renowned arts and crafts center
  • A sculpture class can go from armature to finished piece in five days

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts on Tennessee Crossroads

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts

The 2008 Tennessee Crossroads portrait of Arrowmont, introduced by director David Willard: students come from all over the country to immerse themselves for a week or two in a chosen craft, and - in assistant director Bill Griffith's account - they leave changed.

Key takeaways
  • Students immerse for a week or two in one chosen craft
  • Draws students from all over the country
  • Filmed during a summer session in 2008

The campus on film

The feature documentary traces the full century: settlement school to modern craft institution, with the Smokies' craft economy (the Arts & Crafts Community loop, whose own page is in this directory) as its descendant. The campus tour films walk the studios, dorms and gallery spaces; the student films catch workshop weeks mid-process — kilns, looms, lathes.

The 2016 fire

One film here is a December 2016 news report: the Gatlinburg wildfire reached the campus and damaged buildings (two dormitory buildings were lost in the wider fire coverage of that week), while the school's core and its community carried on. It is included as record — the fire is part of Gatlinburg's modern history, told on several pages of this directory.

Watch: more views

3 videos · summaries from the actual guides

The History of Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts

Knox County Public Library

Knox County Public Library's full oral-history documentary on Arrowmont: settlement-school memories from the families the Pi Beta Phi school served, the industry and opportunity it brought to Gatlinburg, and the race to save the school's own archive - including Kodachrome motion-picture films that were almost beyond recovery.

Key takeaways
  • Oral histories preserve the settlement-school era
  • The school's own film archive survived near-loss
  • The school brought industry and opportunity to Gatlinburg families

Exploring a Hidden Arts School in the Smoky Mountains!

Mike Peace Woodturning

Woodturner Mike Peace walks the Arrowmont campus in 2018 on his way into a Beth Ireland class: the lathe room, her pencil boxes turned from collected scraps, and the practical route in - turn beside the tram, parking by the sign. A student's-eye view of the school as a workplace.

Key takeaways
  • The turning studio runs a full bank of lathes
  • Enter beside the tram; the campus sits just off the Parkway
  • Classes are taught by working artists (Beth Ireland's turning class)

Arrowmont Woodshaping Workshop Highlights and Recap

Cammie's Garage

Cammie's Garage documents a 2018 woodshaping workshop week with Doug Finkel and Robert Lyon: Sunday arrivals, a turning studio with no fewer than 16 lathes, and a classmate who taught ceramics, glass and sculpture for 38 years before retiring into woodworking.

Key takeaways
  • Workshop weeks start with Sunday arrivals
  • The wood studio holds no fewer than 16 lathes
  • Classmates range from hobbyists to retired professors

Why it belongs in the directory

Because Gatlinburg's craft identity starts here in 1912, and because visitors walk past it daily without knowing what it is. Now you know: a school, a gallery, a piece of living history — visit respectfully, on its terms.

Sources: the 9 videos on this page, filmed at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg.

Watch: the full set

3 videos · summaries from the actual guides

Arrowmont - What Starts Here - History

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts

Arrowmont's own 76-second history: founded 1912 as a settlement school, a full-time arts and crafts school from 1945, and a century of Appalachian craft carried through scholarships, residencies and youth programs.

Arrowmont School forward-looking after wildfire damage

Becca Habegger

WBIR's December 2016 report from Arrowmont in the weeks after the Gatlinburg wildfires: the downtown campus sustained damage in the fires and was already looking forward - the school's recovery, covered as it began.

Arrowmont Enriches Lives

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts

Arrowmont's own 2016 film, 'Arrowmont Enriches Lives' - the school's portrait of its campus, workshops and mission in its centennial decade.

More Gatlinburg essentials

Start from the Gatlinburg hub for the full directory, or keep exploring:

Share this page
X Facebook Pinterest Email