Cat's Eye Carving

Creative Careers Day.

I spent Friday inspiring young adults with stonemasonry.

East Kent College in Dover in conjunction with the Maison Dieu ran a creative careers café, the students could choose which activity they would participate in and there were also tours of the college.

I was invited to run stonemasonry activities and decided to give a basic introduction to the fundamental tools used.

I took my tools, stone, drawings, photos and my old course notes.
There were four sessions of 45 minutes and each group had a go at the basics of stonemasonry, I also showed them how to draw an Ellipse using the trammel method, this is a great introduction to technical drawing as you only need paper, a ruler and a pencil.

I demonstrated the basics of stonemasonry, using draft, claw and bolster chisels and then they all got to try their hand. Each group was split in two so they had roughly 15 minutes on each activity.

The morning was two groups of school children and in the afternoon I had two groups from the college. They were all studying different subjects, but being given the opportunity to share my career story and my passion for stonemasonry was fantastic.