Just before I went off on leave, one of our listeners tipped me off about an exciting new program that is seeking to tap into South Africa's very rich tradition of artisanal craftsmanship and also to create employment opportunities for
unemployed youth. The concept is Craft School South Africa and it envisages a series of campuses around the country where learners can be trained in practical crafting skills as well as softer skills if you like, emotional intelligence, business management, the kind of tools that will help them to make a living after they graduate. And I want to say thank you to our listener Andre for alerting us to this concept and the fact that it is in its
fledgling stages. It's my huge pleasure to have with us today the founder of Craft Schools South Africa, Justin van Brada, who is joining us via zoom. If the name is familiar, you are obviously a designed guru of some sorts. You'll know. Justin is a highly acclaimed interior and furniture designer with over twenty five years experience in the design industry. He's
worked both in South Africa and in London. He's been involved in craft based startups before but this concept is on a whole different level, and it's a great pleasure to have Justin with us to tell us more about the vision and where it stemmed from. Justin from Brudau, Welcome to Cape Talk.
Thanks Papa, Thanks very much for having me.
It's a pleasure. Just before we talk about the vision for a craft school, let's just talk a little bit about your own journey, Justin. The calling to a life in design and making and creating beautiful things, is that something that sort of goes back as far as you can remember. Tell us a about your own journey.
Yeah, I think so.
It wasn't a route I followed when I studied after school. I went to Stellenbosch and started with law and then dropped that, and then moved economics and dropped that, and I ended up studying politics and English, and.
After that I went to.
Design time It's Good of interior design and kept on which pretty much changed my life and the whole trajectory of it. It was fun by a woman called Joland Mitten who serves on the board of the Craft School now, and he's one of those women who runs a very consistent, nurturing, rigorous program and it trained me to being then trained me to persevere, I think, to finish things, but also to understand about the balance of nurturing and hard work. And it's kind of you know, listen to your story,
be heard, now, sit down and do the work. Is the sort of ethos there which is amazing, and that it really did guide the course of my life, right And I then went to London on a kind of a gap year that that's kind of never never ended. I ended up being in the UK for twenty five years.
Okay, now, justin obviously making a name for yourself with your own design work. But that that what you've just said about the ethos, that that combination of the nurturing, the recognition of the emotional needs and the person and their aspirations, but combined with the realities of what is needed to succeed, that perseverance, the willingness to hard work. I know that those are core to what you envisage
for the craft school concept as well. But you're also incredibly passionate about the importance of preserving traditional craft skills. Perhaps before we say anymore, we should try and more precisely define what you mean by craftsmanship and craft skills. Because some people sort of write that offer as oh, well that's netting or doing beadwork or something to pass
the time as a hobby. You've got a much broader sense of the concept of craft and how you want to apply it in this context, do you want to explain?
Yes, So it is that whole thing, as you say, you know, and it's very unpopular to.
Go and learn to do.
What people see as a traditional craft because they remember their grandmother are sitting in a staying machine all their lives, as opposed to know something sexy. So the sexy crafts are like blowing and beautiful ceramics and beautiful leatherwork and things like that, whereas crafting is made by hand, and there's the wonderful Italian craft institution called homer Faber, which is basically man made is the literal translation, and that
is exactly what it is. And so what we are going to be teaching is a series of different crafts.
That are made by hand.
And if you look around your home, it is something useful that is made beautifully by hand. So it's not just your beautiful ceramic vase, but it's your piece of furniture, it's your your you're you know, you're if you live in an old place, your pipework and your boiler could be a handmade item.
And so so there.
Is this whole there's this whole education that we're trying to bring back of these beautifully made, useful items have a value. There's an economic need for them. There is an economic need for us to make locally more in South Africa, because even for the bigger companies who have been importing for years, they've realized that if we're not making in this country, we don't have anyone to buy anything in this country, and the whole economy comes to standstill.
So we have to put we have to create jobs so that we can create the cycle of purchasing.
And it's for us and for us. The closing of the circle.
I'm going to the end of the story now, but is after these young people graduate in their craft and the first four crafts that we're offering at our first year, we will end up with a whole full complement of twelve different crafts. But our first four crafts are iron work, which is literally from boiler making all the way through to you know, metal furniture and gates and railings and
that sort of thing. The second craft is textile, so's weaving, spinning, yarn, block printing, text screen printing, all in this traditional manner. The third craft is CMT classic CMT. When growing up in Cape Town, all the way through wood Circon Assaultier of every second shop was a CMT shop in people in a sewing machine making beautiful things. Now you can hardly get something altered. And the whole idea is to is to bring back their whole cat making trim crafters.
And the root for those crafters, to anyone who might be listening, actually is it's not just going and sitting at a table and then sewing T shirts for the rest of your life. I was recently at TFG and the route to employment and opportunity in that industry is so vast, but the young people don't know about it. So if you study, you've got you've got to know how to make something before you can become a garment engineer or a textiles engineer or a footwear specialist.
And that is the starting point. The classic CMT.
And the fourth craft that we're offering is classic furniture making and restoration. Because nobody can fix anything anymore and traditional upholstery, and there.
Is a skills gap for that.
So we've identified these first fore crafts as our starting point and sixty students for our first year, and the full complement of students post school is we're looking at one hundred about one hundred and twenty students, but we want to start our first year with a smaller compliment so we can hone our course and just make it, make our mistakes in our first year and hone and refine our course to then seamless need transition to one hundred and twenty students. But all of these sixty students,
our research tells us we'll walk straight into employment. But our big goal is to set up a craft center adjacent to each school so that we can create this new manufacturing base of people where people can order things and bring things. We're not a design school, we will be. We are training in making beautifully and excellently so that people can bring their designs and have things made through these craft centers with the crafters as stakeholders. And that
is the key thing. The crafters are stakeholders in their future, and we're setting up these different centers in different locations across the country. We can we can we can help
sustain communities where bigger industries may be pulling out. We're busy discussing very early stages with a mining company about the closing of minds to create a roadmap for setting up schools in these communities as the minds put out, so that so that people can stay there and get married there, have their children, then their grandparents can know, they can know their children, and you can stay in the community where you live and you build up this
wonderful network. And in the same vein, if you've got a chart a young man or young woman up in Limpopo, for instance, who just doesn't fit in, you can say, you know what, We've got a craft center that you can go and work out. Be a stakeholder in Cape Town or East London or Quasilian style, wherever it might be. There's a network that you can create for for people to exist and a bigger community.
That's the end goal anyway, just for the sake of anybody who's come into this conversation midway and doesn't know who you're listening to. My guest joining us by a zoom this afternoon, justin fan Brida an acclaimed interior and furniture designer and the founder of a concept called craft
Schools South Africa. The intention is to open the first branch here in Cape Town next year in twenty twenty six, and to keep on growing and expanding throughout the country thereafter a focus on crafting skills, on occupational skills that can provide a pathway to employment, to self sustainability and to a future and hope for young people for whom Justin, unfortunately we know hope is dying for many of them.
There is just the sense of overwhelming hopelessness in so many communities when we look at the youth unemployment figures in particular. So I love about the story the combination of somebody saying I'm prepared to offer you a way to make your own future. But it goes hand in
hand with this wonderful concept of preserving these skills. Justin, in the age of mass manufacture, of so much being automated and taken over by computers and three D printers, let's just talk a little bit about the value of holding on to this personal handmade craftsmanship. Obviously, for somebody like you who's a designed professional, there's a sense of personal pride in the work that makes it important to you.
But why should we.
Want to hold on to the handmade, handcrafted when a can computer or a three D printer can do things quickly and.
Easily, because they tell the story of our country and they tell the story of our lives. Everybody's got something that was handed down to them by someone, given to them as a gift by somebody, and those things tell the story and they are they're the threads that we've tapishure of our lives, and they are so important. And there is a language which it happens between the brain and the hand that cannot be replicated by a computer.
And I'm not for one moment saying that a three A digital printer isn't the most amazing thing, because it is, and we hopefully, we hope one day to have one in the schools, because they can make components that you can then by hand make something bigger, bigger than just a component, and they and there is a so and
it's the same as drawing. When you design something, there's a language that happens from your brain and your pencil when you sketch that you just can't you can't get that on a computer, and and that is an intrinsic value, but it's our cultural economy as well. And things made by hand are are what people are, what people resonate with, there's a there's an emotional resonance and and I think
that's really important. And where where we haven't invested is in our what is known as anti crafts, which is the worst word in the world. These handicrafts are have no one's invested in them, so people are still making what they were making one hundred years ago. And I had a wonderful conversation with a woman in India who runs a huge organization who invest in handicrafts, and their help craft is you know, if you got a broken loom,
they may finance getting being fixed or whatever. But they and she said that the biggest challenge they have is because they don't do any training. There's no design input, and so people are still making what they were making before. And so you know, nobody wants the carved giraffe anymore, you know, people who moved on from that sort of thing.
And so what we're hopefully are going.
To create is an opening in a marketplace of people looking for something in by hand. That and they can bring their designs and have them made at the school, and they can put their ideas and the ideas bounce off one another.
And I think that's really really important.
But what you were saying about hopelessness, Pippa is is is.
What really struck me.
We went two weeks ago to a an open day at a school and I Deserved school in the in Kpe town and it was their state appointed open day. This was the day where we career's day we would go and we would like jos along and put up our table and it was our first open day, so we all off. We went with our bags of physicism, lollipops and our big signs, and off we went and we nearly had a swim bed.
Was the day.
It was raining so badly with that storm. And we got there and there was this hall full of kids sixteen to eighteen, grade ten, twelve, and three organizations turned up with the paramedics, the fire truck.
And us, and I thought, my.
Goodness, where are all the people who say they give a dad? And I was actually quite outraged about it because I was so disappointed for these kids. And the questions that we were asked were really bright, intelligent, exciting questions about you know, so if we come here, can we make our own business and how would we get
the materials? What the kids are really excited about being exposed to something particularly creative, and that is the one thing that don't offer our kids in our unserved communities, you know, core centers of the rage at the moment, but no one is offering our creative kids anything. And there's a huge amount of money going into early learning development because the best thing you can do for a young person is teaching them and something out before their
turn ten. And I totally get that, but there is a whole segment of our society and we have therefore changed our initial age qualifications.
We're now accepting our applications between sixteen and.
Twenty five for the school because these kids, they were kind of forgotten, and the creative kids particularly because they're often the dyslexic and the dyspractic and the ones that really struggle at school. And so we're non fee paying. We're a nonprofit, it's an NPC. It's registered as a cape Craft school because that's how.
We were going to start.
But it is a non fee paying school and it costs ninety thousand rand to put a child through this program for a year and it's expensive because to get a child, which we have to pay for is part of the thing. From their home to the school and back every day costs twenty one thousand round a year.
Two you cannot fee. You cannot educate a hungry child.
So each child will arrive at school and be given a breakfast snack and they would eive at the end of the day with an evening snack. Sometimes take two hours on the bus to get home or the train, and they have something to it and we will also we have this hidden curriculum which is all about their welfare, and they will cook together and learn to cook, and they will create meals for one another as a.
Whole big lunchtime program.
And they will also have counseling and numerously in literacy we'll have to bring that up to speed if that's lacking, and social counseling, one on one, group therapy, counseling. We want to turn out a student body that are engaged young South Africans who are excited about life. And because it's a free school, we have to counter the whole freeness of things.
So we are making community a huge part of what we do. So it's about turning our a student body that understands.
The communities about what you put in and what you take out, so they will immediately volunteer things, go back to the charities where they were because we are sourcing a lot of our students through charities that nurture young people, and they will go back in their holidays and volunteer back at those charities. What the events those charities throw, and that is a whole part of appoints that they're going to earn during the school time.
Ninety thousand round per child per year. There's no shortage of I suspect, willing applicants and pool of potential candidates. Where are you getting the funding to fund that ninety thousand round per child per year?
Well, we are a major fundraising drive at the moment.
Have I initially thought that I would have to raise the money internationally having been away for twenty five years, I thought that I would probably raise the money internationally, But there has been a huge, huge amount of good
will in South Africa. Momentum Health has offered their private healthcare program called Health for Me to all of to all of our students, which is amazing, And there are various foundations the private sector, and finally I've knocked down that some doors in the sector and conversations are beginning to activate their ecosystems to help. Because we need food and we need transport, we need a campus and we need everything basically because we don't have anything. But we've
got a lot of support, but fundraising. It took a lot of time to get our applications right, to get our eighteen A, our state certificates saying that we are a charity, and all our registrations the Department of Social Development, so those were all in place by May, and so we've been using June, July and the rest of the year to complete the conversations that we started with a
number of organizations to gain the funding. But we are in fundraising drive and we've got all different routes to funding and they're all on our website.
Fantastic right just to finish our conversation with Justin von Brida,
the founder of Craft Schools South Africa. Before the break, we were hearing the vision of beginning with one campus here in Cape and ultimately hopefully expanding to have centers all over the country where learners will be able to be skilled with crafting skills, the likes of textile weaving, furniture making, iron work, progressing in later years onto carving and sculpture, leather work, ceramics, speedwork, jewelry, glass blowing and the like, and the whole package that goes with that
of ensuring that they're given the best possible chance of success, meaning that it's not just about offering them a place at the school. It's supporting with transport to and from school, with nutrition at school, with life skills, etc. Justin you were saying beforehand, obviously you're still in the fundraising process and you haven't yet identified an actual physical venue. So how confident are you that you'll be able to open that first branch in twenty twenty six in Cape Town.
Is it sort of a big dream that's still a far way off or do you feel certain that it will happen?
There are no certainties, I don't think, KIPA. But we did change.
We did change the name from Kraft from Cape Craft School to Craft School South Africa.
And because we have been after already.
A campus in Johannesburg in working very closely with Josie and my Josie who are doing credible work up there. And we've been offered a building in the IDAs Valley in Stellenbosch and it was and so we were we were pretty certain that we could pivot to Stellenbosch for our first school. However, after going to that career's day in last two Wednesday or two two weeks ago, I'm pretty determined that we were loping Ko because they're students who are relying on us. There are students who who
are so excited about what they could be doing. And when I asked the principal what they do what their kids do after the trick, he goes.
Well, now go back into the community.
Some of them can raise the money to go to Taik Crivate School and do something, but there's just no opportunity. And so I'm I was with Dawn Plumber, one of our board members who running operations of the of the of the Foundation, and I looked at her, I said, we've got to open the school in Cape Town. So we've got a we have it, we have it. We have an evening reception happening in in August. We've had
a lot of conversations. I mean, having done Hannesburg a few times and there are a lot of supportive people who are activating networks. And now the we're having I'm having conversations with west Grow and we have identified a building and we are negotiating a lease, but it is a commercial lease and it's expensive, and with the money that we spend on that, we could educate another fifteen kids.
And I just can't believe that there isn't a building somewhere in Cape Town that that we could we could we could move into at a kind of a CSI range or something, because it's a great thing, the school, and it was for me changed my whole life. I mean, I moved back to Cape On for twenty five years. It's quite a quite a thing, and it is for me, it was a star sort of too bright not follow, but it's a The children's reaction to.
This opportunity is so exciting to see.
And and yeah, we'll open the second February next year.
We open, Yes, all.
Right, So then the final question justin I've got a couple of people saying, you know, I'm involved in this industry or I'd like to help or find out how to get involved. If somebody listening to this would like to be part of the story, or can perhaps connect you with that Unicorn property you're looking for, or would like to find out more about the concept, what's the best way to connect with you?
They can email us.
The address is on the website and where craft School South Africa dot com.
Craft School South Africa dot com is the website to visit and just reach out by that well. All the best to you, justin from Bernard. Great to have you on the show today and I hope we have a follow up conversation in January next year, weeks ahead of your official opening.
Thank you very much, Papa, thanks for all your helping.
All the best to you, Cool, thanks for your time. Just Ston van Breda