Contribution short abstract:

The Journeyman stage of craft training has all but disappeared in the UK. This paper explores the past, present and future necessity of gaining multiple perspectives in creating well rounded craftspeople to enable them to attain the to sustain and pass on their crafts to future generations.

Contribution long abstract:

As a working craftsman, the bucolic vision of the thatcher plying their craft can be somewhat distant when you are balancing on top of a ladder in the driving rain! I often hear cries of ‘there can’t be many people like you left’ from the ground, and unfortunately, they are right. There are only three and a half people left working in Scotland today who have the skills and experience to form a functioning roof from plant based materials they have gathered from the land (i.e. thatching), and the Heritage Crafts Association identifies over 250 other crafts ‘at risk’ in the UK (HCA 2023).

In the face of this, training schemes are frequently reinvented in an attempt to reverse the decline. It seems that the word that is attached to these schemes most readily is ‘Apprenticeship’. But once you have finished your training, what comes next? How does one gain the confidence and ability to sustain the practice, or progress to become a ‘Master’?

Perhaps the answer lies in the much less discussed second stage of mediaeval craft training; The Journeyman. Sennett (2008, p.58) defines this as “The difference between brute imitation of procedure and the larger understanding of how to use what one knows”. In gaining experience through travel and observing other makers, this paper will seek to explore the value of perspective to create the well rounded craftspeople of the past and future, and how and why this crucial stage of learning can be (re)incorporated into craft pedagogy.