About the Comox Valley Folk Skills Collective

A Place to Learn, Practice, and Share Foundational Skills

The Comox Valley Folk Skills Collective exists to support the practice, transmission, and continued relevance of foundational craft skills—skills rooted in material, land, and time.

We work with clay, wood, earth, fire, and metal, often beginning at the source: harvesting clay, preparing fuel, shaping materials by hand, and building the structures and tools required for the work itself.
This approach slows learning down, but it also makes it durable. The Collective is not a school, retreat, or drop-in makerspace.
It is a working group organized around shared projects, responsibility, and long-term engagement.

Our Approach

This is a learning space, but not a school. We learn by working alongside one another, through shared projects that require care, patience, and follow-through. Knowledge emerges in the course of real work—preparing materials, building structures, firing kilns, maintaining tools—rather than being delivered as instruction. The pace is intentionally seasonal. Projects unfold as conditions allow, and understanding develops through repetition, use, and time spent with materials and people. This work tends to draw those who already feel the need for it—people who value depth over efficiency, continuity over novelty, and gathering around shared effort rather than structured programming.

Skill Sharing as Contribution

The Collective also serves as a platform for members to share skills and experience they have developed elsewhere or within the group.
This may take many forms:

Leading a focused work session
Mentoring others through a process
Supporting a project with specialized knowledge
Demonstrating a technique in context

Skill-sharing here is practical and earned, grounded in real work rather than formal instruction or self-promotion. As trust develops, members naturally take on greater roles in guiding and supporting others.

Shared Projects, Shared Responsibility

Much of what we do is collective by necessity. Kilns, shelters, workspaces, and material systems are built together and maintained by those who use them.
These shared projects create:

A common foundation of experience
Opportunities for mentorship and informal teaching
A sense of continuity beyond any single individual

Participation carries responsibility. Members contribute time, care, and attention—not just interest.

Why This Work Matters

Folk skills are not about reclaiming the past. They are about maintaining human-scale knowledge systems that keep us grounded in material reality.
In a world increasingly shaped by abstraction and speed, this work offers:

A return to physical engagement
A deeper relationship with materials and process
Skills that remain relevant across contexts

The value of this work compounds slowly—through shared effort, lived experience, and continuity.

The Role of Place

The Collective gathers at a number of dedicated sites around the Comox Valley. The land shapes the work. Weather, seasons, materials, and limitations all influence what is possible and when. Our spaces are modest and evolving—outdoor work areas, shared tables, kiln sites, and structures built as part of the learning process. The emphasis is on function over finish, usefulness over polish.