A Man Walked into a Workshop and You Could Too

We had a walk-in today and it got me thinking about how rare they are becoming. There used to be people in and out of the workshop every day with one request or another; I’ve brought my tandoori oven in, will you fix it? My car’s been clamped can I borrow a grinder? Is Adam around? Now with emails, couriers, and working from home, these visits are few and far between. This is not all bad, in fact it’s easier to focus on the job at hand, but something is lost. The five-minute-job is in danger and everything comes with admin. This is a problem for us because those five minutes give someone a chance to see our space and what else we can do, and more often than not one little bracket leads to something more. 

When someone comes in with an object to fix, an idea to talk through, or with curiosity alone, it situates metalwork as a public service needed everywhere, not just on the city outskirts where the rent is lower. All kinds of services continue to be pushed off of the high street and our only presence in people’s day to day lives now is on instagram. It’s a good reminder that instagram is actually doing something - It is today’s equivalent of walking past and hearing an angle grinder going, seeing red curtains light up, and knowing that we are there.

If you walk past a workshop you can walk in and take it from there and you are already a part of it, but if you only see people making things on your phone it becomes less clear that you can get involved too. A lot of people wouldn’t even know where to begin to get something made and it is becoming more and more hidden. It’s nice if you already know a person for a job, you’ve just got your place and you take it there, but when you simultaneously know no-one but have access to everyone online it gets complicated. And so here we are starting a blog to push us higher up the Google high street