It has been a truly harrowing couple of days, with my heavily pregnant wife being rushed to hospital by paramedics on Friday, and a gut wrenching day while we waited to hear if she and the baby were ok. Genuinely the most terrifying experience of my life. Fortunately both mother and baby are well, and Rachel is back home, but it has left us shaken and thankful for the support of our friends, and yes, our community. At moments like this, good news and uplifting thoughts are very much in demand, and so it seems like the perfect moment to post a follow up to last week’s “community is” post.

The author

As some readers will have noticed, the Monday following publication of Furniture & Cabinetmaking issue 232, I uploaded to Instagram, together with each of the contributors to the article, our pictures showing what “community” mean to us, long with the hashtag communityis. The idea was to provoke some discourse about the role, and value, of community in the woodwork crafts. Part of me hoped that a few other people may follow suit and upload their own “community is” picture, although I did not really expect anyone to do so.

Derek Jones of New English Workshop

The reaction we had was quite staggering, and the number of responses uploaded to Instagram has really reinforced what a strong sense of community we as craftspeople have. The variety of suggestions as to what community means has been thought provoking, and I am indebted to each and every person who has uploaded a picture. This blog post represents just a sample of the pictures which have been uploaded, so thank you to the contributors who have allowed me to include their pictures here.

Ethan Sincox, writer of The Kilted Woodworker blog

James McConnell, writer and curator of the Daily Skep blog.

Joshua Klein, contributor to Popular Woodworking and the creative force behind Mortise and Tenon magazine.

Derek Olson of the Old Wolf Workshop

Contributed by Travis Knapp of Rarewoods (I suspect Travis is not as youthful as the picture would suggest…)

Brennan Simpson of Simpson Woodworks

Levon Cullen

Tim Hermie of Restore to Build

Of course, the discourse does not end here, so if you have not already uploaded a picture, then please add to the conversation; let’s keep talking about our community, and it growing.