KENT, Conn.—In a day of screens and devices, the joy of manual creation is often lost.
But families who attended the SPARK program on the adjacent grounds of the Connecticut Antique Machinery Association and the Eric Sloane Museum Saturday, Oct. 25, were given a hands-on opportunity to explore 33 crafts and trades.
Children, and sometimes their caretakers, pounded nails, laid bricks, climbed trees in arborists’ gear, sawed wood, learned about plumbing and electrical work and generally had a grand time. As 8-year-old Charlie Doenges took his turn at cutting a piece of wood with a large miter saw under the direction of contractor Chris Tolly, his mother, Caitlyn, enthused, “We were so excited to come back this year.”
Indeed, many of the families roaming the field were repeat visitors, whose children were resampling trades they had tried in years before and experiencing new ones.
Mason Lord, a founder of TradesUp, the organization that sponsors SPARK, said there were 33 artisans and contractors on the field this year, a few more than last year, and that 460 visitors had pre-registered for the event.
He greeted each new family, asked if the participants had picked up a pair of protective goggles, and gave them a one-minute discourse on what they should do. “The most important thing is safety,” he said. “Listen to the tradespeople, don’t be shy and have fun!”
“We’ve had more people arriving early than we have ever had,” he said. “A lot of them are returnees.”
He hopes to continue to grow the event until it happens at locations across the country and is preparing a guidebook for towns that might want to follow suit. At present, SPARK occurs on Martha’s Vineyard and in Kent each fall and TradesUp presents workshops during the summer months in Kent at the CAMA headquarters and at the adjacent Eric Sloane Museum.
Lord, owner of Hudson Valley Preservation, found inspiration for founding TradesUp in the declining number of people entering trades, a trend hastened by a growing dependence on all things digital, a decline in hands-on learning opportunities in schools, and misperceptions of what a career in the trades can offer.
The United States is experiencing a significant skilled trades workforce crisis, driven by the aging workforce retiring at a rapid rate. More than one in five skilled tradespeople in the U.S. is older than 55 and when they retire, they take with them valuable expertise that is lost to younger workers.
Add a societal bias that favors university degrees over vocational careers and there are not enough new workers to replace them. This has led to a shortage of skilled professionals in fields such as construction, welding and HVAC. About 70 percent of employers nationwide report difficulty finding qualified workers for skilled trade roles.
There are efforts both educationally, at schools such as Goodwin University, which was on the field Saturday, at Northwestern Connecticut State Community College in Winsted and in manufacturing companies to attract and train new workers, but TradesUp, which exposes youngsters from a very young age to career possibilities, is an important adjunct.
The trades represented Saturday ranged from skills dating from pre-history—such as spinning and weaving—right through to the most modern technologies. Rick Liegl, a master carver who specializes in 17th-century carving and joinery, showed youngsters how to split maple logs with a wedge and mallet and then explained about “spalting,” wood that has been discolored by fungi, creating distinctive dark lines. The first stage of decomposition, spalting in its early stage can create attractive patterns in wood products.
Liegl, often a guest presenter at the Sloane Museum, carves spoons and bowls from greenwood and also specializes in building 17th-century boxes, chests and furniture from locally harvested wood. His tools seemed quaint when compared to those used by other artisans on the field. Tolly, for instance, was equipped with electric saws that accomplished in seconds what Liegl’s great-grandfather’s saw did in minutes.
Another trade that brings the past into the present is the art of building a stone wall. Justin Money of Irish Rock Art, inc., in Kent demonstrated for young watchers how to position natural field stones to create a strong and enduring stone wall.
Farther down the field, Andy Steele, a bricklayer who had traveled all the way from North Carolina to take part in the event, was guiding youngsters as they built a somewhat uneven brick wall. “We’re not looking for perfection,” he said. “I just want them to get the feel of it.”
Sign painter Eric Lake had roughed out a replica of the cloud mural local artist Eric Sloan painted for the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, and invited young artist to help complete it. “It’s really great to teach kids to paint something analog, to get them away from screens,” he said.
Lord commented on how isolated young people are from manual work in an age when their every action is carefully monitored by adults. “The older tradesmen come in and say, ‘When I was a kid … .’ They will say, ‘When I was 7, I was already driving a tractor,’ and things like that.”
The children attending SPARK were, indeed, closely monitored by adults and protected from harm, but, for once, they felt the power of holding and using tools.
