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Traditional Arts & Crafts
We approved a loan to Louise Evans in mid-2004 to study traditional arts and crafts at a college in Sweden. The course covered the practical arts of man from the Stone Age onwards and taught techniques through experiment and reconstruction. Skills taught included ceramics, black-smithing, weaving, spinning, felting, tanning, butchering, making charcoal and iron from scratch and basic glass smelting.
Louise approached Prometheus because quite a few years ago we had made a loan to her parents, Pauline and Philip Evans, for their Tree-House Eco-Lodge in Northland.
All courses at the college were taught in Swedish so it was quite a courageous step for Louise to take.
We approved the loan and Louise wrote to Prometheus part way through the course in 2005 to express her enjoyment of the course and her gratitude for the loan. We have been unable to print her story until now:
"...studying the practises of man throughout history makes one realise that anything is possible with patience, a little ingenuity, and the willingness to ask those around you what they know. Education such as this is so important in today's society built on distance from the land and distance from each other."
Louise is living back in New Zealand now and feels she has gained immensely from the course and is exploring ways in which she can both use and pass on some of the traditional craft skills she has learnt.