Whilst I was away in London recently I was really chuffed to check into my email briefly and notice that Trade School, a project I had backed on Kickstarter, had reached it’s funding goal of $9000. I thought that was fantastic, and can’t wait to see another term happen.

I love the idea of Trade School, because it acts as a conduit for awesome people within their communities to come out of the woodwork and teach others how they do their ‘stuff.’ You can see a list of people and classes that took place at Trade School last time around by visiting their website; classes like How to throw an arts festival for 1-3 days or Scrabble strategy for beginners. Trade School seems to straddle well the divide between learning things that are either work-based, or fun-based. The photo below comes from a class hosted by Ellie Irons called Drawing for Pleasure. Trade School is the sort of thing I imagine working really well at Donkey Wheel House, in Melbourne. Perhaps Kinfolk Cafe will adopt the idea? (wink wink).

But the real reason I loved seeing that Trade School got funded was because I am really falling in love with the global platform that Kickstarter is becoming. It is becoming a great way to find excellent slow projects that people are working on. Sometimes, finding interesting people doing funky, out-there, awesome projects can be tough. Now, Kickstarter has 10 of them every week! I’ll be backing more projects in the future and intend on posting those projects I back on this blog. In the meantime, if you’re looking for people doing awesome projects, start your search on Kickstarter