Tales from the Craft Field
for Marie, Nic and Clodagh, without whom…
How do you blag in to festivals when you’re a hard-up single parent with no money for tickets? Simple: the answer is, you find a role.
In my late thirties I’d hit a bit of a crossroads. I’d been earning a contented but precarious living from a variety of crafts, as well as creating applique soft furnishings and setting up an educational centre, but I felt the need for a different sort of challenge. I was fed up with doing the expected, ‘girly’ things, but lone-parenting on a Welsh hillside realistically meant I had to be self-employed. There were a few things that pushed me into blacksmithing. I’d long fancied working with metal, thinking then in terms of fabrication and sculpture, but in conversation with a blacksmith friend, he suggested I chat with the smithing tutors at Hereford Tech. I made an appointment and fell instantly under the spell of the smithy – I can still remember the smell as we walked in; an immediate alchemy working through my senses on so many levels. Coming up to Easter, they’d had a couple of students drop out and had space in the summer term. So that was it – my mum funded it and for those few months I spent two days a week at the anvil, staying away overnight with friends while another friend at home looked after my three kids; as a family we’d never been so organised! A two-week intensive course in the July and I had enough of the basics to set myself up. I blagged, borrowed and bought the equipment I still use, pulling together an off-grid, eco workshop that I could take anywhere. The BBC had been showing a new production of CS Lewis’ The Silver Chair, much of which was set in vast underground caverns with the most beautiful and elaborate iron screens, sconces and candelabras – probably made out of tin-foil and cardboard – but that’s what I wanted to be able to make. Functional but beautiful ironwork.
I was so excited by my newly learned, ancient skills that right away I knew that, as well as working on my own designs and commissions, I wanted to find a way of sharing what I’d been so fortunate to learn. Since the invention and ubiquity of the internal combustion engine the smithy is no longer the beating heart of every town or village and metalwork has long been off the school curriculum; I was looking for an environment to give folk a chance, in a small way, to get a feel for this most venerable of crafts.
Festivals are about much more than music – there’s usually a craft area and I was lucky in the early days in knowing the organisers of some of the small festis that were popping up all over Wales and from there to Greencrafts, off-grid festival crafts fields curated by a wonderfully creative couple (and now their daughter too) with intense skill and care, bringing together a wide diversity of craftworkers from throughout the UK and Ireland; and from there I travelled onwards into similar communities in France. Greencrafts and its offshoots have become my other family, through which I’ve made so many strong and lasting friendships that I can’t imagine how my life would have panned out without them.
Running workshops, demonstrating and sharing skills at a festival is different from a trading stall. You’re treated more as a performer, allocated tickets, a pitch and even, sometimes, expenses, which meant that at minimum cost, we were in!
I made a few mistakes. Given the dangerous toys I play with, I learnt early on that one-to-one sessions were safest and most practical – though I mostly burnt myself, not the public, honest! I set age limits and reserved the right to turn away anyone I felt uncomfortable with. I limited the range of what we made, for more streamlined and predictable sessions – I could express my creativity at home! But most importantly it became clear that I didn’t go to festivals to make money; I wanted to treat them as a holiday but I also felt passionate about sharing my blacksmithing with as many people as possible, regardless of their age or financial situation, so to start with I offered free workshops. What a lesson! It seems that when some people are offered something for free, not only do they not value it, but they assume an entitlement and I often had long queues and frustrated, angry punters.
So I developed a form of barter. Because I didn’t want to exclude anyone, I didn’t set the exchange terms, other than it wouldn’t involve hard cash.
“Do the workshop, then bring me something that you think it’s been worth to you and that you think I’d like.”
My one rule was that I would accept gratefully whatever it was they brought.
It’s been a bit of a game, a bit of a challenge, but hopefully one with a lightness of touch. We are now so used to others putting a value on goods and services that it can feel quite uncomfortable to take personal responsibility for deciding what a thing’s worth. Some people have loved it and spent ages making me something with another crafter, some have scoured stalls for the perfect trade, some have even sent me something in the post once they’d returned home. Children have given me their last piece of flapjack, told a joke or sung a song. Adults have brought me books, tools, beer, wine, mead and meals, while others would far rather have thrown money at me and really took some persuading otherwise – then risen to the challenge beautifully and creatively. Occasionally, very occasionally the workshop participant hasn’t returned, probably because they found the whole idea too difficult – but that’s OK too. It’s all part of the risk, the trust, the game.
I dressed for fun as well as safety – in party frocks and big boots, spangly aprons, toppers and tails, bowlers – sometimes even wings – and shared these with workshop participants. I decorated my pitch with an abundance of silk flowers, banners and bright bunting, all of which made it child and woman friendly without labouring the point.
It’s been a real privilege to have had these encounters, to have shared so many stories and received such a wonderful variety of exchanges; here is just a snapshot of those memories, just some of the more memorable bartering and other tales from more than a quarter of a century of blacksmithing in the Greencrafts fields.
Kate The Wordsmith 