Last week I had the good fortune to be invited to judge a collection of projects produced by students attending Minneapolis Community and Technical College. My fellow judges were guys from various aspects of the woodworking community here in town.
All of us found the work to be inspiring and creative. The goal of our judging was to award various prizes to the projects in front of us … it was not a head to head competition in the classical sense. And while I was there to award prizes to the students, it is possible that I got the best prize of the day. Just looking at the variety and quality of the projects gave me a huge lift. And it changed my opinion of the future … at least for the moment. For a while now I have had a certain dread for the future of my chosen passion of woodworking.
I was worried that it might be going the way of the dodo. And while it is true that our traditional channels into the craft have almost vanished (public school shop classes specifically), seeing these projects and the love of woodworking expressed through them, told me that the future isn’t so grim after all!
Sincerely,
– Rob Johnstone, Woodworker’s Journal
