EMPOWERMENT FOR WOMEN

I started running woodwork classes with Fiona McBain through the Zero Waste initiative not long after Ruth and I moved back to Perth in 2018. We made a point of encouraging women to come along as well as men right from the start - I got the idea from one of my best eco friends, Richie, who had been doing just that back down in Wales.

It's been brilliant fun helping women to get to grips with saws, cordless drills etc and they love it! I often hear that women aren't often encouraged to do anything like it and have often wanted to for ages. Many of them go on to make amazing things - it's very interesting to see that really woodwork and other practical stuff isn't necessarily a male gender thing at all. In fact, some of my women students actually get on better with using these tools and making stuff than many of the men.

MOVING ON FROM HIERARCHY AND PATRIARCHY

I'm really interested in the bigger picture of how men and women move on from the general current way of managing things, the top-down hierarchy, mostly patriarchal - you don't have to be a genius to look around and see that it's not working for us in the world. It's one of the themes I explore in my first novel, The Monkey Wrench Kid.