It's been a lot of fun teaching basic woodwork at the Zero Waste Space here in Perth. Lots of fun and also very interesting in ways I wasn't really expecting, the sort of experience that makes me more hopeful about the future.
 |
| The first six-week intermediate course in full swing |
It's taken a few years and a lot of persistent hard work, especially from Fiona McBain of Zero Waste Perth, to get the ZW Space up and running. The space is at the back of the Bike Station, in the old Peddie's Ironmongery building just a couple of blocks from the city centre. It's well equipped with benches, tables and chairs, a re-claimed maple floor, brilliant projector and screen system, and can put on a show for thirty or forty people. It's already proved to be a brilliant community asset for all sorts of community events and classes.
My own involvement started last summer helping to get the woodworking facility going, making benches from salvaged wood and sorting out what tools to get and so on. We opted to focus on hand tools, mostly because noise and dust would have been an issue, but in fact this kind of hand woodworking has turned out to be very accessible for complete beginners and is a kind of woodwork that can be a core skill for the sustainable future, well-suited to waste reduction through using recycled, reclaimed and green wood.
EMPOWERMENT FOR WOMEN
We set up the first few courses for women only, thinking that woodwork has an image of being a kind of generally man dominated thing which might put women off joining a mixed class. The first few classes were brilliant fun and it was great to see ladies working away with drills and saws for the first time. My fellow teacher, John Jackson, and I had groups of complete beginners making plant stands and trestles from scratch just in a few hours. A group of our students from the beginners course has gone on to do a six-week intermediate course and have been making all sorts of things, boxes, cold frames, tables and an obelisk, mostly from reclaimed wood.
FOCUSED ATTENTION
It's been really interesting to see everyone on the six-week course settling down and getting into their projects. There was a lovely atmosphere of quiet focused attention, something you don't get in the same way in a workshop full of howling machinery. It took me back to my time at Newark Technical College studying musical instrument repair. I spent some time at the violin making school there and was really impressed by the dedication of those students, twenty people working quietly away with super-sharp tools, in a lineage of craftsmen going back hundreds of years. Without that fine work music would be very different.
 |
| The story of music is also the story of craftsmanship |
The other thing that's really impressed me during the woodworking classes is the spirit of co-operation. We've had eleven people working away together at times, space has been a bit tight and there's been a shortage of some of the tools, but everyone's been brilliant about sharing and considerate of everyone else. Also, we've had men on the longer course as well as women and again, no problem, the spirit of co-operation has prevailed.
MORE WOODWORKING COURSES COMING UP...
Email me at ianecowatt@gmail.com if you'd like to join a basic woodworking course, we're hoping to have several coming up in March 2020.
MY OWN WOODY BACKGROUND
I'm working on a page about my experiences in design and woodwork, here.
TREE-CONOMY
And another page about my vision for trees, abundant woodland and woodworking as the core of a sustainable future here, TREE-CONOMY
No comments:
Post a Comment