Marina about Workshops at Werkstattschule

The first time I ever held a hand saw without being scared of chopping my fingers off, was during a woodwork workshop with Karim.  I still remember how shaky my wrists were, and how sore they felt after taking way too long to saw off a thin piece of soft wood. I also remember having to continuously wipe off my sweaty palms on my jeans to have a better grip on the handle. 

Who would have thought that, ten months later, I’d feel comfortable enough to instruct school pupils on how to safely (and confidently) handle woodwork tools? 

I guess it goes without saying that I had absolutely zero handwork skills before joining the Werkstattschule. My arts & crafts portfolio was limited to a few drawing/painting attempts, a candle made of recycled wax and a few clay sculptures dated in the early 2000s – aka, my artistic peak back in elementary school. My academic background and career path, though very different from anything Werkstattschule-related, still proved to be useful when it came to the informal teaching and media aspect of the project. My German-speaking skills, on the other hand, were close to non-existent.  

The first workshop we had was a day-long “Woodwork Basics” workshop with Karim, during which we learned how to measure, cut and assemble a picture frame. 

The very next day, Paul taught us how to draw and carve on wood in the “Woodcarving Basics” workshop. We used this chance to decorate and paint our new picture frames with wood-friendly oil paints. 

This is still one of my personal favourite skills, and I lost count of the number of hours spent carving and painting between a project and another. A few days later, our colleague Holger taught us how to handle digital cameras and video equipment. These skills proved to be extremely useful when we assisted him, Karo and Sebastian in filming the video tutorials for Koobox.

The next skill we learned was screen printing. This workshop involved reading a comic on the topic and preparing the frames with Christian, picking the design and, finally, printing it on tote bags with Safeya. Marina and I are still proud of the results, and carry around our handmade bags with immense pride!

Throughout the rest of our ESC year, Marina and I also had the chance to learn how to work with metal with Jojo and Kyran, how to fix our bikes with Jojo, how to build beautiful (and confusing) “magic” boxes with Christian and, finally, how to model concrete into artistic sculptures.