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The Mission:
The Craftwork Training Center’s mission is to elevate the concept of “The ARTS” as a valuable objective in life by teaching vocational crafts to participants through experienced mentors. The center aims to encourage both experienced and aspiring artisans to practice and perfect their skills, increasing their individual marketability and personal enrichment.
The Means:
The Craftwork Training Center distinguishes itself from other craft schools by recognizing that being able to make a livable wage from a trade is essential to the future success of the trade. The center maintains a “NO STARVING ARTIST” motto, which promotes hands-on trade work as an honorable and enviable profession. The primary goal of the center is not only to foster and grow a new generation of tradespersons but also to network with building owners and professionals across the USA, linking job leads and people who can potentially service the lead. If someone has a contracting business and wants to add more value by training themselves or their employees with new skills, they can network with the center for training and finding potential new forms of work. If someone wants to start their own business or obtain gainful employment with an existing firm, the center promotes jobs through craftworker.net.
Our Unique Trademark, Method, and Planned Outcome:
The Craftwork Training Center’s trademark symbol is ARTisAn Objective®, which is branded into all workshop program titles to emphasize both the art and the artisan. Devoted craftspeople teach hands-on workshops, transferring their skills to a new generation with the hope of producing the juried-quality artisans of the future. The center aims to prepare a highly trained generation of artisans who can build, repair, and beautify the future, promoting the ongoing legacy of “The Trades.”
How You Can Become Involved with Our Mission:
The Craftwork Training Center Workshops are lead by a group of artisans, called “Mentoring Members.” The Mentoring Members of the Craftwork Training Center consist of an international private guild of artisans who represent a myriad of craft disciplines.
Mentoring Members of the Craftwork Training Center should all share the common desire to propagate valuable vocational crafts for the benefit of current and future generations in every place where their influence can be effective.
One of the first important steps in re-invigorating the already popular craftwork training movement in the US is to create awareness of the needed and valuable craft disciplines.
This will effectively be done by emphasizing to people considering to learn a vocational craft how the crafts can be valuable to them and to society. Earning a living through a vocational craft is a key part of the message intended to influence people to consider crafts as an alternative or to augment a college education and one’s current career. Creating awareness requires that our mentoring members are able to convey knowledge of their craft verbally and/or through writings while also possessing the ability to properly demonstrate their craft in an active workshop environment. Mentoring members become part of the legacy by keeping the crafts alive when teaching and practicing each craft to the current industry standards or they are otherwise encouraged to develop a written standard when certain crafts need a written standard developed. We hope that our student interns will become instrumental in keeping the crafts alive as well when they go out into the workforce and marketplace to practice and perfect what they have learned through our organization. Student interns are encouraged to spread the word about the crafts to their friends so that these friends may choose to pursue a valuable vocational craft for themselves.
The headquarters for Craftwork Training Center is in beautiful Bucks County at “Millhafen Farm”, home of the old Derstine Sawmill. Our address is 3145 State Road, Telford, Pennsylvania, 18969.
We are always looking for exceptionally talented artisans and encourage anyone reading this to tell us about the talented craftspeople who they know. Please consider to share your experience surrounding the exceptional abilities which you have seen in someone in a craft so that we may consider to reach out to these individuals to at least know of our organization.
We encourage all craftspeople to contact us if they believe that they have a gift within a valuable craft discipline that would forward our mission through their involvement with us and want others to know about the services they have by networking with us and potentially teaching for us.
There is no obligation placed on any who share a story to actually become involved with the Craftwork Training Center. Just e-mail us to tell us about someone or about yourself if you think you would like to make that initial contact and begin to have an association with us for potential future involvement. Make sure to send contact information on whomever the craftsperson is plus contact information on those who can validate the authenticity of their work. It is best to send this information with photo references to represent examples of completed work. We review this type of information in order to help us build confidence in any craftsperson’s abilities especially as an introduction to them if we were to want to reach out to them and if we end up referring them and their services to those who use our database to find craftwork specialists in their area.
Members of our private organization can be just a listed Artisan and/or “Mentoring Member” who potentially could teach the craft discipline to others. We select Mentoring Members as we need to have the craft represented and we find that we have been introduced to a juried quality artisan who can effectively do this. Mentoring members of the Craftwork Training Center go through a vetting process where they must be endorsed by their peers as a key person who is thorough both in their interpretation and understanding of their craft and their ability to personally carry out the craft discipline to what might be considered the highest standards of their industry.