Dispatches from the Great Re-skilling

Something is going on out there.  More than 80 people have signed up for various training projects for my local Transition Town project in Brixton, which is known in the Transition world as ‘re-skilling’.

In the Great Re-skilling of Lewes project, a whole list of courses at the local library from now until the autumn cover basket-making, quilting and bike maintenance.

Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins argues that our generation is the most helpless in human history, because we have no idea how to make grow or repair all the things which our grandparents’ generation took for granted.  It is an idea that seems to have caught fire.

But it isn’t just Transition culture.  There are now 180,000 people across the UK waiting for an allotment so that they can grow their own food.  For the first time since the Second World War, seed companies are selling more vegetable seeds and flower seeds.

All around the country there is a growing list of courses in basic skills, especially in food growing but also in crafts and arts skills.  Visionary politics plus training has always been a potent mix.  For the first time since the 1890s, there is a generation of political activists who see their radicalism in terms of growing and making things.

In case anyone thinks this is a peculiarity of the UK, or some facet of the emerging Big Society, the news from the USA is similar.

The Catholic Thomas More College in Merrimack, New Hampshire, has announced that it is reviving a series of medieval-style guilds to help students learn woodworking, music, baking and art, a fascinating re-think of what university life might mean.

College admissions director Mark Schwerdt said that the purpose of the guilds was to “show students how to live”.

“Students will now have confidence that they can fix their own furniture or make music with their family,” he said.  “They will learn how the common man can create works of arts as well as how to balance work, family and leisure – while enhancing their ability to be creative.”

Boston is only 100 miles away.  When Harvard Business School starts adopting similar ideas, we will know that a genuine revolution is on its way.

Read more about how reskilling fits into nef's vision of a sustainable and socially just economy in our report The Great Transition.