I had the please of attending the Skillshare Open day at the weekend where I got to make a badge, pair of earrings and even got a free henna tattoo as well as meeting a lot of lovely new people. I wrote up an article about it for the UnDee Magazine blog
Skill Share Open Day
Skill Share Dundee is a community-led project that helps people of all walks of life to connect by sharing knowledge and skills. They promote the teaching of old forgotten crafts, reducing waste through recycling and repairing old items and encourage healthy and more self-sufficient lifestyles. They run many workshops such as gardening at their community run allotments on Dundee Law, fish tanning and various textile based classes including rag rug weaving and sew your own bunting.
I went along to the open day they were running in their new premises at Swan House, Dundee Technology Park. Having not been out to the Technology Park for some time I was surprised at how run down it looked with so many businesses having closed down. However it was wonderful to see one of the buildings being put to good use for such a great cause especially seeing that the Dundee Refugee support group were based at the same premises as well.
The first studio I went into I was treated with a quick badge making lesson. One of the girls who is a textile student at DJCAD let me use her badge making machine and lovely painted patterns for some unique results. The children got to have a turn and were very pleased with theirs too. At this point I had not realised that Skill Share were also renting out artists studios on the premises. It was great to meet them and have a look at all their delightful creations.
After some free coffee and delicious home baking I got to experiment with making my own earrings out of old aluminium can pieces. I make my own jewellery at home but it hadn’t occurred to me to try using this material before. It was good fun and easy to mould and also a great way of recycling old beer cans. I got chatting to a few of the other members including one of the girls who worked at the Refugee Centre and she gave me a beautiful henna tattoo on my arm.
Overall I had an excellent afternoon, everyone I met there was really nice and friendly and they have a brilliant range of workshops and activities on offer. They post up a new timetable every month so I am going to make a point to get back down to one of their workshops very soon. All of the Skill Share workshops are free, they rely on donations and funding from various organisations. It is an excellent concept and I would recommend anyone interested to go along and try them out or if they have any skills or help they could offer to get in touch with them.
You can find out more at the following links;
Naomi McIntosh
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