LandsEnd Forge & Forgotten Arts Workshop
Inaugural Meeting and Conversation Café, Thursday Nov 3 from 6pm at Djanbung Gardens
Please join us for this launch of this exciting project. 6pm Come and check out the LandsEnd site and progress to date, 6.30pm bring something to share for a pot-luck community dinner. 7.15pm Join the conversation café to explore options, what you’d like to see the project offer to the community, and ways you’d like to be involved:
- Practical support to help complete the workshop
- Teaching, mentoring &/or Learning skills
- Using the space for your craft
- Fundraising Events
- Regular Repair Cafés
- Forgotten Arts Fairs
- Forming an Artisan collective
Please bring your ideas to share
About the LandsEnd Project
One of the great casualties of the past half-century has been the loss of knowledge and skills of the traditional crafts and arts that built human society. This new project at Djanbung Gardens Permaculture Centre will provide a workspace for people to practice and share these forgotten arts before they are lost.
Over the past 22 years Djanbung Gardens has shared skills in permaculture design, regenerative food production, natural building, appropriate technology, sustainable lifestyle skills and community building to thousands of people from around the world, and worked closely with the local Nimbin community supporting community resilience and local self-reliance.
With the LandsEnd workshop we are bringing our vision one step closer to full realisation by creating a dedicated workshop space to reviving and practicing a diverse range of forgotten arts and survival crafts. The may include blacksmithing, making and mending tools, wood and metalwork, stone and earth masonry, bamboo craft and furniture making, natural fibre craft, appropriate technologies and other survival skills.
The centre piece of the project will be the blacksmith’s forge and main artisan workshop with 88m2 floor space and adjoining shipping container for storage. The main workshop will open onto veranda workshop areas, plus there’s a covered area for treating and storing bamboo.
A small demonstration forge will be constructed in the meadow in the style of a simple traditional village blacksmith. The half-acre meadow will be available for fairs and events together with the existing public facilities on Djanbung Gardens.
We are interested in forming an Artisans Collective for practitioners of traditional crafts and trades to exchange knowledge and skills, conduct workshops and courses, and support collective marketing for selling their products to the public. Many artisans excel in creating beautiful and practical things but struggle with finding ways to generate income or maintaining a personal website to promote their art and the logistics of on-line sales. One of the initiatives of the collective could be to develop a website to showcase local artisans and market their products.
Other ways we can support local artisans is through hosting regular fairs, demonstrations, festivals and other events to promote awareness, of these traditional artisan crafts and their important contribution to regional self-reliance and sustainability.
Building Plans for the main workshop