La Caravana Escuela
Lines of work
Training Lines
Forging Brigades
These are intensive Blacksmithing courses taught by La Caravana Escuela in agricultural communities over five continuous days.
Once a community is chosen, we move there and camp, set up the Workshop Tent and teach basic Blacksmithing techniques. People, learn, with hammer and forge blows, to make the tools they need for their work, using mostly recycled automotive steel as raw material. At the end of the course, an assembly is convened to establish the Rural Smithy, which is permanently installed in the community, and the days, times and work shifts are set for those who will continue with the forging. At the same time, with young people and children from the community, we plant trees in deforested areas or in watersheds to recapture the CO2 released during the work by our charcoal forges.
Specialized Retraining
After the first Forging Brigade, we return to the communities to offer specialized techniques to people already trained. For two days, more complex forging techniques are taught in the Rural Smithy, the questions of the participants are addressed and new forging and finishing techniques are taught, seeking higher standards in the manufacture of tools from the use of Learning Templates. In these follow ups we monitor and evaluate what is being learned, systematize the operation of the rural smithy, maintain the tools and equipment and provide the participants with new safety gear. By the end of each follow up, the Rural Smithy have increased their productivity and quality levels.
Production Lines
Rural Smithies (RS)
As we have already seen, at the end of the Forging Brigades, La Caravana Escuela leaves a Rural Smithy installed in each community so that the students can continue forging. Over time—after months of practice, follow ups, and specializing in toolmaking—the workshops become mini-factories, spaces for the manufacture of marketable tools for various uses (upon request). The fact that they are forged by farmers, with recycled material in rural communities of Mérida, gives the pieces not only a purpose, but also a certificate of origin.
School Smithies (SS)
Este programa nace de la necesidad de las escuelas y liceos de enriquecer sus programas de educación técnica con el oficio de la forja de hierro, una actividad con fundamento práctico que, acompañada del Manual del Bachiller HerreroThis program evolved from the need of schools and high schools to enrich their technical education programs with the craft of Blacksmithing, an activity with a practical basis that, accompanied by the School Blacksmithing Manual, allows students to learn a valued skill while supplying the school with maintenance tools. An additional and important benefit is that the surplus tools generate income from sales to hardware stores and individuals.
Farmer Forge Meetings
In order to unite the farming communities and to generate teams and work proposals, we hold meetings, either in the (RS) of the Gavidia community, or in the LCE Base Workshop in El Valle, Mérida, where the participants of the Rural Smithies of Piñango, Gavidia, Mucurubá, Mucuchíes and Los Nevados interact and work with industrial forging machinery while learning new finishing techniques and standardizing processes. These meetings are the ideal space to distribute forging commissions among the participants, in order to meet the demands of the hardware sector.
Outreach
Public demonstrations
After numerous expositions at universities, companies and events, we have found that practical forging demos are a very powerful dissemination tool. Participants experience first-hand the magic of forging and its transformative power to create utilitarian and artistic objects. Through simple demonstrations the itinerant training allows participants to obtain an immediate and tangible result working with their hands, and deepen their understanding of the fascinating alchemy and malleability of heated steel. These demonstrations validate and disseminate the millennia-old practices of Blacksmithing and keep the forges burning. hacer con las manos, entendiendo la fascinante alquimia y maleabilidad del acero al calentarse. Estas demostraciones reivindican y difunden la práctica milenaria del oficio de la forja, y mantienen las fraguas encendidas.