Newsletter
Meet the Woodturner Live
Hello everyone,
I hope everyone is safe and well. Everyone here at ‘Meet the Woodturner’ is working hard for our upcoming event on the 19th & 20th of March 2022 – ‘Meet the Woodturner Live’. This event will host demonstrations from world renowned demonstrators from across the globe and is sure to be a highlight of the 2022 Woodturners Calendar!
Firstly, I thought I would tell you a little history about MTW. I originally created MTW on a different platform and while it started out ok but, as time went on, I felt the direction of the meeting was not to my liking and I decided to step away. I was taken aback by the number of emails asking me to come back and run the meetings. I thought long and hard about this, and the solution I came up with is the meetings you see on your screens every other Sunday at the present time.
Jimmy Clewes was the first guest on new format and it was a resounding success. With the interest and demand growing, we upgraded to a business type package of Zoom. This could not be maintained without the help of Alan Zenreich. Most people who attend the meetings will know Chloe Carroll – ‘The Boss’ and Helen Bailey – ‘Lady H’, whom are the backbone of the meetings. Carl Burn is our website designer and fixer of anything that I break! Carl has helped us tremendously over the growth of MTW and we would be lost without his technical skills and support. I can’t leave out Andrew Hall who is our sound and camera check man for every virtual event we are involved in and a huge support to the team. As we run these meetings free of charge, we do try to cover the costs with donations. This is generally a long ways short of the running costs for which I personally foot the shortfall. On that note I would like to point out our wonderful friends who donate their prizes frequently too raffle on the night, in support of the meetings and to encourage donations. Thank you all very much.
So, as you see it’s not the Pat Carroll show as someone once called it; it is a team effort to deliver an informative and fun evening.
Throughout the course of these meetings, we have asked attendees for feedback. The first thing that became apparent was the demand for to see the recorded interview. The team discussed this request and Carl Burn set to work on an archive of all recordings which were made available to us and put them on my website. We set a very nominal fee to help with running costs but unfortunately this fantastic back catalogue, is rarely availed of. We also try to meet the requests of people who would like for us to interview a particular woodturner they are a fan of. We do our research, contact the guest and most times it is a resounding yes, to which we are very grateful for. All time consuming work!
Our next most common request was for our guest to demonstrate, and the simple answer to this was no, as due to the Covid Restrictions over the past two years, virtual demonstrations have become a huge part of many woodturners income. So, we felt to ask our guests to demonstrate for free would be unfair and also impact on their potential to earn from their own demonstrations should they wish to stream.
This leads me onto Meet the Woodturner Live. We at MTW discussed running our own symposium to meet the requests of attendees. We announced the proposal at a meeting and it was a unanimous yes, that we should indeed run the event and here we are with only a few weeks till the event airs! Carl has been working hard getting a platform in place that will make this event user friendly and a quality service with reliability in delivery.
But we needed a unique selling point to make this event appeal to people. We thought long and hard about what we - as woodturners ourselves - would like to see and get from this event. The first thing we agreed was that any profits after costs would be dived out amongst the team. This ensures that no single individual or organisation solely profits from the event.
We approached world class demonstrators and got a no hesitation yes from everyone. Our next aim was for unique demonstrations, which we have also achieved by having demonstrators make their debuts into the virtual world by demonstrating on MTW Live.
Some of demonstrators have shied away from IRD’s (Interactive Remote Demonstrations) but were willing to do it for our event! Next on our list was how to get the youth involved. Carl immediately ran with this and set up a demonstration with a very talented young man by the name of Arun Radysh Hassis. Arun is a Wadkin Ru lathe owner just like Carl. These monster lathe owners have a great treat in store for us. Staying on the topic of young turners (I wish I qualified!) Kirsty Dalton joins Gary Lowe for another collaboration of skilled turning and embellishment. Currently we have more young artists interested in joining our event and we will do our utmost to get them involved and bring their skills to a worldwide audience to further help them on their artistic paths to success.
Have you ever wondered what two world-renowned woodturners get up to when they work together for the first time? Mary Clewes has produced a fly on the wall documentary/demonstration of Jimmy Clewes and Nick Agar getting together to create a stunning piece of work. We have short musical interludes between demonstrations from world renowned musician Fiona Sirr. Fiona is a very talented artist and we are delighted to have her on board. For when you create your masterpieces with all that you have learned, Kristin Gray will help you take better photographs of your work, in her demonstration. I mentioned the archive we created for MTW, free access to this archive will also be available for thirty days along with all of the demonstrations and presentations from the symposium. There is so much more to this event and Carl is continually updating the schedule.
We want to thank our main sponsor Don Rawlins from Chroma Craft for sponsoring the event and also Record Power, Spexor and Mike Hunter Tools for additional support.
Regards the MTW team
