Made in the Middle Skill Share

Calling all Birmingham crafters with skills to share.
We’re celebrating everyday making in the Midlands.

Community crafters are coming together to share skills, demonstrate their making, learn from each other and to connect creative communities and individuals.

Come along to see techniques in different materials, pick up tips and find out about crafting groups across the city. Bring your own makes, we’d love to see them! We are interested in everything from crochet to cake decoration, blacksmithing to woodwork and everything in between.

Community crafters

Crochet by Sarah and Asha
Activity until 1pm: work with Sarah to create a sample of crochet to decorate a card.

Embroidery by Irfana and Sheena
As well as showing examples of their work, Sheena will be demonstrating visible repair skills. Join in with your own piece to repair or bring some of your own embroidery.

Knitting and leather work by Michael Brown
Join Michael and learn to knit or share your skills.

Cake designer Rebecca Hui
Demonstrating festive cake decorations, including fir cones, fir branches, cinnamon and festive characters.

Home décor in jesmonite by Hannan
Demonstrating how to make terrazzo chips and how she uses them in her final pieces. Have a go at making terrazzo too.

Examples of blacksmithing by Smashing Metal from Newbigin Community Trust.

Examples of green wood carving with hand tools by Pathcarvers.

Professional makers

Darren Appiagyei

Darren is a wood artist. He will be demonstrating his innovative pyrography, (burning designs into wood). His practice embraces the intrinsic beauty of wood; be it a knot, crack, bark or grain. As a wood artist his passionate about discovering and exploring new woods. Darren is highly inspired by Ghanaian wood carving, its rawness and exploration of texture.

Mahawa Keita

Mahawa is a fibre artist, community artist and maker, she will be demonstrating contemporary constructed textiles including macramé, crochet and knitting. Mahawa studied advanced constructive textile techniques adding machine knit and embroidery techniques and gold work to her skill set.  She is also experienced in hand knitting, hand embroidery, macramé, pattern cutting, project drafting and CAD design. Her practice explores concepts through textile art, developed through stories and structures in cloth.

​Nobuko Okumura

Nobuko is a jewellery designer maker, she will be demonstrating wax carving. Nobuko is strongly inspired by geometric and natural forms, her approach is truly “wabi-sabi”*. She explores a combination of geometry and nature to create something unique from these apparent opposites. Much of Nobuko’s work features gemstones combined with gold and silver. She uses wax casting and wax carving, with highly skilled traditional fabrication methods.

* Wabi-sabi is a Japanese outlook on life that teaches that everything is inherently imperfect and fleeting, which is why it should be appreciated. Wabi-sabi finds beauty in irregularity and imperfection and appreciates deep values beneath the surface.

At the event

During the event we’ll be asking for stories of your making:

• Bring along a make to be photographed
• Where in the world did you learn your skills? A mapping activity to record stories of migrating skills.
• Where do you share your makes? Share your social media tags!

St Germain’s volunteers will be serving tea, coffee, samosas and cake to raise funds for zero carbon heating.

There is parking in front of the church or there are bus stops just outside the church on both Portland Road and City Road. Numbers 11 & 13 stop there.

Funded by Birmingham City Council.