The Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival

I went to the seventh Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival yesterday. Apparently the seven events have all happened in the past three years. This one has several before it was housed at the Rudolf Steiner high school.

The reskilling movement is aimed at sharing skills and practices that are useful for a resilient transition to an anticipated low carbon future. The assumption behind this movement is that we face twin challenges of peak oil which is the time where global oil production will be exceeded by global oil demand, and carbon driven global climate change. Reskilling, or the great reskilling is an idea that was put forth by Rob Hopkins, the man who also started the transition town movement. The transition town movement is essentially people working together to prepare local communities for these twin challenges. The Reskilling Festival in Ann Arbor was launched by people involved in the transition town movement. The basic idea of reskilling is that in a low carbon world we will have to know older skills that have been lost or forgotten, we will also need new skills to help us with the transition to a “post-carbon” consuming world.

While transition town and reskilling are responses to what many people think of as the end of the industrial age, these movements remind me of some of the social responses to the brutality of life early in the industrial age. The Luddites were those workers who saw the devastating effects of industrial production, and took to destroying factories as an act of self-defense. Ned Ludd for whom these radical conservatives were named is said to have destroyed a couple of knitting machine apparently driven mad by the monotony that they require. The arts and crafts movement, often described as a design, was started by a man named William Morris, and inspired by the thinking of John Ruskin. (Ruskin by the way was a major influence on Mahatma Gandhi, who proposed the development of India through its villages rather than industrial centers). One of the notions of the arts and crafts movement was that industrialization was leading to an impoverishment of style, and a deskilling of craftsmen. In fact we see that there is a skills curve in the technological advancement of production. At first advances in tools require greater skills, then a point is reached where the machine takes over and less skills needed. The outdoor summer camps which started in the 1800s was also a protest against the progressive leaning urbanized and industrialized world. In various forms these movements ideas and ideals have carried forward throughout the industrial period. Certainly the back to the land movement of the 1960s picked up many of these threads.

On the surface transition towns, and reskilling are movements that respond more to the material effects of industrial society on our environment, while past movements perhaps responded more to its effects on our souls. But a closer look shows that reskilling does embrace the spiritual and social skills we need in forging ahead. The festival offered classes in four general areas, home, food and garden, skills and crafts, and heart and soul. I was at the festival, in part, because I was asked to facilitate a class on co-counseling. Later in the day I attended a workshop based on the thinking of Joanna Macy, the Buddhist who has worked with issues of hope and despair in this time of global transition. I think this embrace of “heart and soul” skills is important. We need eco-technique, and eco-knowledge, but we also need eco-wisdom.

You can find out more about the specific programs that were offered yesterday at the Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival website http://a2reskilling.com/. It was an eclectic, and to be honest, and incomplete collection of classes. I want to report on the meeting that happened at the end of the day. This meeting was called to discuss the future of the Reskilling Festival. First let me say that this festival with nearly 30 classes was free and open to the public, its organizers were all volunteers, the Steiner school shared their space for free. But the two main organizers of the event are both stepping back. So the essential question of the meeting “was who is going to step forward?” This is not such an easy question to ask, the job clearly comes with a large time commitment. At the end of the meeting I did see a couple of people sign up to help.

Instead of focusing only on this need, the meeting raised the question of what we might want from such an event in the future. Various ideas were suggested, some of which were considerable divergences from the present format. There is nothing wrong with change, and any effort to teach the skills that the Reskilling Festival aims at promoting is promising. My own take on what direction the festival, or the local reskilling movement should take is really through the lens of what builds this movement as a community. At the same time that I was teaching the basics of co-counseling, the architect who helped me design my super insulated addition, and the man who runs the summer camp where my children have gotten to learn things like starting fires with flint and steel were both offering classes. This type of overlap of people with common ground, and the in the hall conversations between workshops and classes is the warp and weft with which community is woven. This is part of why simply posting videos of workshops on YouTube is not enough

One of the more exciting things I heard spoken at this meeting was reference to related efforts and projects, such as the Ann Arbor free skool . A real movement is made up of many efforts. To change things, to prepare for the coming change, or to help midwife what Joanna Macy calls the great turning, our little bit of reskilling as represented by this festival is not enough. The task in front of us is huge. Fortunately the Reskilling Festival is also not alone. Whether or not the leadership is found to organize a next Reskilling Festival, and I very much hope it is found, Ann Arbor will continue to have those of us who are interested in creating a sustainable and vibrant culture. The Reskilling Festival is a node that can help that culture to emerge. If you have lots of time up on your hands and are inspired by this vision for a future culture, the Reskilling Festival could use you.