How to keep the craft alive by Mariano Garabato.

The melodious title of Mariano's presentation is: Keep the fire alive !
Using several graphs, Mariano demonstrates that a decline in practitioners is evident in every craft.
The question that needs to be answered is how to halt this trend.

To ensure that skilled workers remain who can contribute to the preservation of heritage, for example.
And asks: Why would you spend an entire weekend making iron when you can buy it around the corner?
Ironmaking is more than just that. It's also part of our cultures and involves the transmission of knowledge.
Knowledge triumphs over ignorance.

Mariano makes a number of suggestions to turn the tide and get people more interested in the craft:
1. Informing schools;
2. Sharing knowledge about the craft. Take, for example, the farrier who learned to make his own special tools;
3. Organizing demonstrations during public events such as career choice markets;
4. Create a group to share knowledge with like-minded people;
5. (International) Actions between craft groups;
6. International exchange of knowledge by participating in events in other countries;
7. Teaching in schools;
8. Meetings between different craftsmen, such as the silversmith and the ironsmith;
9. Provide short introductory courses;
10. Open a YouTube channel where you explain your work and techniques;
11. Study history. On every street corner, in every historic building, you'll find historic ironwork;
12. Visit museums and help restore old works;
13. Study the archaeological finds.

There are countless opportunities to learn and practice the craft. That's in our hands.
You keep the craft alive with commitment, interest and enthusiasm.

Thanks to our cooperation with ABANA we will be publishing the recording of this Treff in the not too far future.

This evening was again an international event.
From beginning to end were 7 very engaged listeners from 7 countries with whom experiences were shared and questions answered.

This was the last Treff.

The organizing team has decided to discontinue the cycle.
The team has worked on this project with great pleasure for five years. We thank everyone who contributed to this project, and of course our listeners, for their input and interesting questions.
The project website and YouTube stay online and will remain intact as long as the budget allows.
At the moment, this seems to be until about August next year.
If you found the project helpfull and want to support it, you can donate directly via our Ko-fi page.

And anyway: The Treff connects!!