In this blog, leather craftsman and educator, Yusuf Osman shares the values that drive his multi-faceted career.
Yusuf Osman is one of eight highly skilled artists and makers who worked with ACAVA in 2023 to run Make and Reuse Creative Workshops, a series of free creative courses inspired by the circular economy and sustainability. Funmi, ACAVA’s digital content assistant, caught up with the expert himself to shed light on his recent workshop, his second time facilitating a course at ACAVA’s Maxilla Men’s Shed in North Kensington.
Yusuf shared: “I’ve been teaching for eight years, I would say, and it’s something that is a core part of my practice, not an add-on to my practice, because I think that craft is a learned thing that is passed down through the generations…teaching then becomes a natural process.”
He added that it’s really important to facilitate sessions, whether they be in the Men’s Shed or anywhere, “because I think that craft is the birthright of every human being. To distract us from craft is to distract us from the power we all hold in our hands, literally. To mould the world around us, which we’ve always done.”
Craft as a self-empowerment tool
Yusuf believes that by being distracted from craft, we lose our ability to take ownership of how we create the world, which means that we feel powerless for all the other things that happen in the world. And so it’s this dual process where we not only lose our ability to function in the world, but also our ability to shape the world outside of craft, which then means that things such as the political things that we are seeing now are a direct result of people losing what it means to craft the world.
In his view, craft has always been something co-created in the community. He mused, “Back in the day, if you broke your car, you would mend your car because you knew how to. But now, we don’t know how to make things, but we also don’t know how to fix things.”
In his view, we could all benefit from the lost art of repairing and maintaining our items.
Craft is collaborative
These values and a firm belief in the importance of craft as a life skill has led Yusuf to his career, and to us, educating those on his course, as well as his digital audience. His aim is to ‘put craft back where people are’.
Yusuf’s teaching will hopefully inspire the attendees to share their skills with others. He continued, “Craft doesn’t belong tucked away…or something done by someone in a studio on their own. Everyone is capable of contributing to craft.”
Craft is universal – not exclusive
“I teach adults a lot and the main thing that I hear is, “I’m not a craftsperson” or “I’m not creative” and I think people need a reframing, start by looking at the word craft and what it means…to do something repeatedly to get better at it.”
Craft your life: one skill at a time
“So even if you don’t make anything, we’re all tasked with one very important thing…to craft our lives, because what do we do every day? We get up, we try and we try to be better every day. So we are crafting every day. We’re crafting our life.”
“And if we can start to see ourselves as craft people, then we can. as the drivers of change in our lives and I think it can go quite a long way into addressing so many of the societal problems…we’ll find the threads that actually connect us all.”
We find Yusuf’s words inspiring and hope you do too! For more about him, visit his website and Instagram.
Would you like to join our creative community at the Maxilla Men’s Shed? Access the latest news and schedule for Make and Reuse workshops (coming soon) and our regular Tinkering Sessions.
Images by ACAVA Shoots.
