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Maker{Leather}: Connecting families through making
Maker{Leather}: Connecting families through making
As part of a knowledge exchange project, Maker{Futures} hosted an exciting hands-on workshop at Arbourthone community primary school bringing together school staff, pupils, and their families. Six families from five different multicultural backgrounds came together to explore leather as a material, building on the Maker{School} approach of exploration, skill-building, and tinker time.
The workshop introduced leather as an organic material, building on the foundational skills the children had already developed using cardboard prototyping. By comparing everyday cardboard with vegetable-tanned cowhide and goat hide, generously sourced from our partners at Leather for Kids, families investigated the unique properties of both materials and developed a clear understanding of how cardboard works as a prototyping tool.
During the exploration phase, families began by using their senses of smell, sight and touch to experience the cow and goat hide leather, before watching a short video tracing its journey from animal skin to a finished material transformed through processes of curing, tanning, and finishing. By using magnifying glasses and water sprays, families then examined the unique grain structures and pores of the leather samples.
Moving into the skill-builder phase, participants received step-by-step guidance on how to create holes in the material using hole punches and a rotary punch, before discovering how to use rivets and snap fasteners to securely attach two pieces together.
Finally, during tinker time, families put their newly acquired skills to the test to create their own unique projects, crafting personal keychains, bookmarks, purses, and bracelets.
Engaging with the material also sparked deep memories, giving parents a wonderful opportunity to share the rich, intergenerational stories that surfaced throughout the workshop. One parent reflected at the end of the day:
"I've talked about memories that I'd forgotten I even had. And I think for the children here, they've probably learned something from their grown-up that has never been shared before."
A Nigerian father shared how animal skins, ranging from buffalo to crocodile, are carefully chosen for their unique acoustic properties to create traditional talking drums for marriages, dances, and celebrations.
An Iraqi Kurdish mother explained the traditional practice of using goat skins for butter-making, transforming an animal hide into a domestic tool.
An Eritrean mother, when asked what the distinct smell of leather reminded her of, answered: "Home." She shared memories of her grandmother, who owned a bed made out of leather.
Participants shared the word for leather in their own heritage languages, connecting the material on the table to their personal histories from the Urdu chamra with its strong "R" sound, to the Polish skóra and the Kurdish kora.
While children are used to consuming leather through everyday items like bags and watch straps, this workshop gave them their very first opportunity to work with it as a raw material, completely reshaping their understanding of what they can create.
Families created keychains, bags, wristbands, bracelets and more and discovered leather as a playful, sustainable material. A variety of techniques were experimented with; leather was cut into, pierced, embossed, fastened together and layered to make creative and useful creations!
If you want to use leather in your classroom please get in touch with the Maker{Futures} team : makerfutures@sheffield.ac.uk
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