Taking Trade School Online
This lab note takes a canter through 8 years of Trade School Organising in Dudley borough, the emergence of neighbouring Trade School Organising teams, and a collaboration between us initiated at the beginning of the first lockdown in 2020 to take Trade School online.
I first heard about Trade School in 2012 from TessyBritton. It began in January 2009 as an experiment by a group of New York City artists. They created a non-traditional learning space where students bartered with teachers. At Trade School, anyone could teach a class. Students signed up for classes by agreeing to bring a barter item that the teacher requested.
Trade School became an international network of 50 local, self-organized chapters with over 22,000 learners engaged over 10 years. Each chapter coordinated the exchange of knowledge for barter items and services. The experience and wisdom of Trade School chapters around the world has been lovingly drawn together in a book.
Trade School arrived in Dudley in 2013
Always eager to spread good ideas, I asked Tessy and Laura Billings if they might introduce Trade School to people in Dudley.
Around 30 local residents and community based workers came along from a number of neighbourhoods. By the end of the session 8 people had offered to become organisers of the first ever Trade School in Dudley, which was to run in Wrens Nest, a 1930s housing estate located a mile NW of Dudley town centre.
Local people with skills to share offered to teach classes. A resident designed the logo. The organising group created a newsletter and delivered it to homes in the neighbourhood. Trade School Wrens Nest launched in April 2013 over 2 days, connecting families and generations and bringing underused spaces in the community centre to life in completely new ways.
A challenge was the time and energy it took to organise Trade School; finding teachers, explaining the model, attracting learners, creating welcoming learning spaces and hosting. While the mums in Wrens Nest celebrated what they had achieved with it, it wasn’t going to be a sustainable commitment for them. The occasional Trade School class was offered after that in Wrens Nest, but not a co-ordinated schedule.
Trade School Dudley launched in summer 2016
In 2016 I worked with Dudley CVS colleagues Donna Roberts and Neil Langford to bring Trade School to Dudley town centre and to Coseley, where people were coming together through Big Local. An experimental timetable of classes ran in Coseley over the summer. In Dudley we launched what was to be the first in an ongoing series of Trade School seasons, with 59 classes offered over the next 4 years. 280 learning opportunities were taken up, with classes held in 9 different indoor and outdoor spaces. Classes included:
Introduction to sign language | Juggling for Absolute Beginners | Art with Acrylics | Hooked on Crochet | Learning to look at Modern Art |Growing herbs and veg for beginners | Textile Art | Breadmaking | How to keep chickens | Introduction to Spanish | Sewing Basics | Photography | Slow Living | Greek for your holidays | Tote bag making | Regrow vegetables from scraps
One of our previous lab team members Nick Booth captured the voices of some of our Trade School Dudley teachers in this lab note, in which he succinctly says of Trade School:
It’s a simple mechanism that really has only one purpose, using sharing to connect people.
In this lab note, team member Jo Orchard-Webb shares insights generated by 7 Trade School Dudley teachers who generously gave ther time to turn a detectorism lens onto Trade School.
Jo sums up key characterics of Trade School in this paragraph:
*The magic unlocked through Trade School Dudley as you will see below includes: meaningful connections with strangers; inspiration for more doing; peer to peer counselling and affirmation; behaviours that support more doing & sharing, such as, generosity, respect, celebration of all types of knowledges, or self organising; and the personal feelings of self worth, belonging, confidence and purpose that result from these connections and behaviours.
3 more Trade Schools launched in Birmingham and the Black Country 2015–2020
Some of our Fellow Travellers started Trade School chapters, and we happily shared our experience and resources we had developed such as teacher packs and class planning canvases (example below).
Trade School Digbeth launched in summer 2015, thoughtfully co-designed and hosted by Impact Hub Birmingham (now Civic Square) team members Nikki Bi and Daniel J. Blyden.
Through our sister lab, Wolverhampton for Everyone, Trade School Wolverhampton was launched in 2019 with great enthusiasm by Saffi Price and Sam Axtell.
Coral Musgrave, a Trade School Dudley learner who lives in Bearwood approached Sally Taylor from Bearwood Community Hub and an independent coffee shop owner and together they created a really lovely Trade School Bearwood launch in January 2020.
Could Trade School work online?
I have shared the above as a precursor to writing about Trade School Online to highlight the hyperlocal nature of Trade School, and in an attempt to convey how much it is about that connection which we know is so much easier to cultivate face-to-face than online.
In February and March 2020 I was working with 7 local people who were offering Trade School Dudley classes to run from the end of March, all of which we had to cancel due to lockdown. While we had set up our Virtual High Street swiftly, in advance of lockdown announcements, it didn’t feel a simple thing to shift these classes online, as they had been designed to bring people together to make and do things.
My gut was telling that me running Trade School Dudley online would require a huge amount of energy, but I didn’t want to drop Trade School completely. So in mid April 2020 I reached out to the Trade School Organisers mentioned above by creating a WhatsApp chat and posting this:
By the end of May, ten of us from three Trade Schools had come together to co-design Trade School Online. We used Looby Macnamara’s Design Web to develop a shared vision and work through a range of considerations. It took us about six weeks to have enough ready to begin inviting offers of classes. We held class planning sessions with teachers, and offered one-to-one planning in addition so that tech concerns and well as class plans could be addressed in relation to the different needs of each class.
Trade School Online launched in summer 2020
A season of 14 online classes was launched in July, with classes running from mid August to early September 2020. 112 places were booked, turnout was around 62%, a similar rate to classes we’ve run face to face.
The success of this collaboration was due in no small part to the care, generosity and commitment of those involved in the organising group, and the diversity of skills and knowledge which our smaller teams contributed to the larger team. There was a healthy pool of trust to draw on, through previous collaborations and having known each other over time. I feel this trust has deepened through working on this together. This trust and care extended out through our networks which drew in the Trade School teachers, and they showed such courage in turning up to share skills and knowledge in such an unfamiliar and uncomfortable way.
Overcoming challenges
We obviously had a few tech hurdles to overcome in setting up Trade School Online — choosing and linking (or not!) platforms to promote, take bookings, run classes etc. And while recognising we might reach teachers and learners who wouldn’t have been able to participate in Trade School before, we were concerned about digital exclusion and lack of familiarity with Zoom and/or Eventbrite putting off learners.
Some of these challenges exist in face-to-face Trade School, I often took sign ups manually in spaces we promoted and hosted Trade School. And helping someone navigate Zoom feels akin to helping someone unfamiliar with a location navigate to the venue of a class. So we simply tried to ensure a personal touch and assure people that help was on hand if they needed it before or during a class.
By far the biggest challenge was finding ways to remain true to the ethos of Trade School, as described by the original founders in their book. There is a tendency for organisers and teachers alike to slip into a charitable paradigm when considering Trade School — but Trade School teachers aren’t volunteers, and giving to charity isn’t a barter item. As Caroline Woolard, founder of Trade School writes in Hand Made, edited by Tessy Britton:
Trade School rethinks value. When I give my teacher something specific (apples, fabric, design help etc.) we are no longer strangers.
Trade School rejects cold cash transactions because barter fosters relationships.
We spent a lot of time exchanging messages about the model and what constitutes a barter item when you probably can’t actually get an item to a teacher. Usually learners would be bringing along teabags, toys, books, plants, biscuits, chocolate, ribbons, notebooks etc. as requested by teachers. Shifting to digital bartering caused quite a headache, until some CoLab Dudley team members (especially Holly Doron) made some fantastic suggestions. Here’s our list of examples:
- Recipe of your favourite food that you know how to make / vegetarian or vegan recipes
- Contacts, introductions, connections
- A book recommendation
- A podcast recommendations / Podcast ideas to start the day
- A (digital) picture that “says” happiness, a flower, sunshine, etc
- Gardening advice
- Playlists for cleaning / getting annoying tasks done
- Hair ideas / tips
- Great local green spaces to visit
- Exercise that makes you laugh
- Easy/quick/healthy lunch ideas
- Plant exchange (if local)
- Spreadsheets that help you in life
- Homemade wordsearch/crossword/connect the dots drawing
- Art activity ideas
- Game ideas (boredom busters)
- A link to your favourite TED talk
- A relaxing soundtrack
- A beautiful image for a screensaver
- A great walking route
Getting digital barter items to teachers posed a data protection barrier. Many of the barter items were emailed or messaged to the Trade School organiser who hosted the class. I had great fun collating them in a little digital barter item bundle to send on to the class teachers in a pdf — below is part of one of these:
As Trade School class hosts we shared notes of our reflections and learnings. We also invited and collected feedback from both teachers and learners before, during and after classes. It was overwhelmingly positive, below are example of some learner feedback:
I thought Shahida was great, loved her opening up & engaging with everyone, made you feel very much part of it… she was so warm & easy to follow — made me feel like a friend instantly with the consistent checking in on people & seeing if we have questions, taking a look at what we’re doing etc.
It was a great session, enjoyed the interactive element with the variety of exercises and I like Sarah’s style and advice it turns out to be a nice relaxing session.
In Wolverhampton a Growing Group which meets monthly has grown from a single Trade School class.
Gearing up for a Spring 2021 season of Trade School Online
Our group of Trade School Organisers was convened last week by Saffi Price, to explore energy and capacity to run a Spring Season of classes online again. We circled back to the Vision, Helps and Limits anchors in Looby Macnamara’s Design Web.
Our visions for this year’s collaboration include:
- Creating a warm invitation to create a community
- Deepen our local reach and connections between people
- Reach more potential teachers and learners through connections with our colleagues and extending intentional invitations to people we know, as well as social media call outs
- Evaluate and share our learning through our own labs / platforms / organisations and more widely
- Blend physical resources / invitations / follow-ups with the online classes and meet-ups pre and post the classes
Limits we discussed are primarily in relation to time;
- times of day / week we can’t contribute
- times we will be leaning into other priorities
- limits on how much time we can invest to Trade School Online.
Helps include:
- Using last year’s process to offer clarity around phases of work and how long they might take, which we can overlay onto a calendar for this year (see timelines below).
- Our wider teams and colleagues who may be able to help; we can identify key needs and associated skills and talents helpful for each phase of work, to facilitate people helping who could give a burst of energy and time (like a relay).
- Playing to our strengths as a group of Trade School Organisers; find out who loves doing what, get intentional about distributing tasks.
- The kindness, care and generosity in our team which means we ask each other if we need help or cover, and we happily step in to support each other as circumstances around us flux.
Do get in touch if you’re curious about Trade School or Trade School Online, or would like access to resources we’ve developed to support Trade School. Pop me a note to lorna@dudleycvs.org.uk
If you’ve organised, taught and/or learned at Trade School do share your experiences in a reply below, we’d love to connect :)
