section Skills fashion special title
traditional skills W
hat’s so important about traditional skills? We could say that they are the processes that have helped to shape our cultural heritage. We need to keep the skills alive so that future generations can enjoy that cultural heritage, whether it’s a castle and the skills that built it, or a style of embroidery or lace. But who’s going to keep it alive? Most of Europe’s skilled craftworkers are well over the age of 50, and the majority of young people – there are exceptions, of course – are not interested in building with lime putty, making lace or weaving baskets. For Grampus Heritage and Training, and their partners from nine countries in the European Union who run the Leonardo da Vinci Development of Innovation project, Green Village, there are good reasons to promote traditional skills: they add value to local materials, and they are environmentally friendly. Some traditional skills are linked to the cultural landscape, and without the product and the process – whether it’s knitted jumpers or hurdles woven from hazel withies – the landscape and the sense of place will change for ever (and often, so will its environmental biodiversity). It is important to maintain the fabric of our heritage as items that people can handle, wear and explore. Traditional skills can mean real jobs and increased income: some consumers are prepared to pay a premium for unique, handmade
traditional BUILDING In the United Kingdom, Grampus focuses on building sustainably and empowering communities. A series of workshops delivers training in traditional lime burning, wattle and daub, woodcarving, heather-thatching and building with clay (‘clay dabbins’). Like most rural communities, in Cumbria there was a great reservoir of skills in the past and these, combined with the use of local materials, made the people self-reliant. Passing the skills on is more important today than ever, because we are no longer living sustainably and each year, those able to teach are fewer and fewer.
HURDLE-MAKING In Ireland, Green Village partner Sylviron is leading a revival in traditional wooden fencing and countryside furniture. This includes hurdle-making, which has been tweaked to address the serious issue of soft-coast erosion. A hundred years ago, every farmer in County Mayo would have known how to weave a hurdle for penning sheep at shearing time. Modern fences with barbed wire (an American invention from 1870) made the skill redundant, but now it lives again for sand-trapping on eroding dunes in Mayo, Wexford and Sligo. Jerry Hawe explains: ‘Here in Ireland, I believe there is great scope for product substitution, using traditional and local wood instead of ugly synthetic materials, a practice we’ve observed throughout our European travels. This has clear carbon-sequestration, aesthetic and cultural impacts.’
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Skills section fashion special title
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items. The aesthetic quality of items made using traditional skills – we could call them culturally aligned products – is usually high. They are visually attractive and stimulating. Traditional skills can draw communities closer together. There is a special importance to the generation-gap-breaking opportunity for grandparents and parents to sit with their children and grandchildren and teach them something practical – it can be wonderfully empowering for all involved. Over the next two years, the Green Village project will work to promote traditional skills as a critical part of the jigsaw puzzle that makes up a successful and sustainable rural community, with a view to contemporising traditional skills, making them more relevant to today’s marketplace. The project demonstrates that rural people across Europe, from Iceland to Cyprus, do care about rescuing traditional skills. They do so not to conserve them like museum pieces, but because they are relevant today for a multitude of social, cultural and environmental reasons. They are one of the keys to future sustainability, and by recapturing the best from our local past, we can put a brake on globalisation and become more personally fulfilled. We can even make what we need, instead of buying everything! greenvillage.hylates-eu.com
LACE MAKING In Cyprus, work is under way with Greek Cypriot lacemakers from the beautiful villages of Pano Lefkara, Kato Lefkara and Kato Drys. Led by Hylates Forestry and Environmental Consultants, and involving the Lefkara Hotel and local high school, a stunning fashion show was launched to display the traditional lace/cut threadwork ‘Lefkaritika’ into beautiful linen outfits. Hylates also trained British and Romanian students in mosaic work, chair restoration, argolios weaving and traditional broom-making. Angeliki Sophocleous, an art teacher at the school, explained that: ‘I beleive it’s important to keep the traditional textiles alive in Lefkara because it presents a unique identity that can only be found at Lefkara. The new generations should keep this identity alive in order to preserve the name that their ancestors already built worldwide’’ For Green Village, the way ahead is clear – to get beautiful, traditional Cypriot textiles into modern apparel and create new jobs for young people in the villages.
BEEKEEPING
TURF BUILDING
In Bulgaria, working with the Devetaki Plateau Association, nine villages have joined forces to use traditional woodworking skills to develop village picnic shelters and sites, as well as rejuvenate honey production, run an international folklore festival and involve young people in the decisionmaking processes of the civil society. Viktor Dzhonev came to Grampus in the UK to take part in the Youth Actions for Rural Futures project, and now runs his father’s honey business. Viktor knows how important it is to keep traditional skills alive – they are the means to his goal of living and working on the Devetaki Plateau. Iva Taralezhkova from the Association is passionate about Bulgaria’s rural future: ‘Our villages on the Plateau have joined together to find answers to serious problems. We’ve identified what we have, and what we can sustainably develop. My son sells Viktor’s honey at fairs, and my daughter guides tourists around nature trails. If we work together, we don’t have to lose our young people to the cities.’
In Iceland, Margrét Hrönn Hallmundsdóttir of Náttúrustofu Vestfjarða (NAVE) offers Green Village the specialism of building with turf, a skill that dates back to the Viking settlers. As a local, sustainable material, turf gives structural strength and great insulation. In Iceland’s beautiful but remote Westfjords, people have been moving away from the villages. Younger people are leaving to enter higher education, and not returning. The area also has poor transport links, leading to isolation, and changes in the fishing industry are contributing to a sparse local economy. Margrét takes up the story. ‘Our Viking ancestors who settled here had a hard life, and they had to use local materials wisely. We can’t expect modern-day Icelanders to live in the same way, but we’re working to rescue some of their skills. I have an ambition to build a Viking longhouse. It won’t be easy – it wasn’t 1,200 years ago. We will use driftwood, like the early settlers, and turf for the walls. My son is in a rock band – maybe they’ll have a gig there.’
ADOBE BRICKs FOR RESTORING In Slovakia, working with Ipel Eko restoring buildings using traditional adobe brick (sun-dried clay), not only maintains the beautiful vernacular architecture but sends strong messages about sustainable building. Over the next three years, teams of trainees from Germany, the UK and Iceland will learn to make and use bricks at the village ecocentre in Ipel’sky Sokolec. Ida Wollent explains: ‘Up to the 1960s local mud, straw and sand was used to make adobe bricks in the southern and central Slovakian villages – in the north they used more timber. The village houses were literally made by the villagers. Today we need our villages to recapture that community spirit and be more sustainable. Reinventing the use of adobe bricks is a low-carbon-economy solution.’
MASK-MAKING In Romania, with Satul Verde, the plan is to make folkloric masks and paint iconic scenes onto glass, both traditional skills. Mask-making is an ancient skill. In Europe, there are still important and meaningful festivals in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Sardinia, Austria and Germany, revolving around the cycle of the agricultural year and the banishing of winter as spring arrives. It’s important to foster traditional mask-making skills, as they link people to the land and keep tradition alive, reminding us of where we come from as well as giving a unique brand to a region for the benefit of cultural tourism. The original skills often reside with older people, but young people are interested in the spectacle and so they are drawn to work together. Monica Oprean, Director of Satul Verde, elaborates: ‘Nowadays people are further away from what used to be real life and real things.The mask-makers still use traditional materials, and the techniques that they learned from their ancestors. Using them again gives people a motive for having a good time.’ We hope that adults from across Europe will attend workshops in the Sibiu villages of Transylvania to practise and celebrate these crafts, and draw from the process new ideas about keeping villages alive and functioning sustainably. Transylvanian maskmakers Anna and Ioana Negoita will then travel to Cumbria in north-west England to help local people act out their literary history with masked characters. They will be joined by Bulgarians and Cypriots, who will bring their skills in textiles as well as experience of storytelling and organising folklore festivals.
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