A few months ago a group of students gathered in the city centre library of Norwich to find out about the basics of sourdough making. The teacher took them through everything that they needed to know about how to make and bake their own sourdough bread. The students didn’t have to pay a single penny but the class wasn’t free either so the teacher didn’t leave empty–handed. Instead he took away brought along barter items that he had requested in advance. In this case an armful of recipe books, bags of flour and mixing bowls.

This class was just one of over forty classes that have been offered over the past three years by a community group I volunteer with called Trade School Norwich. All of the classes have one thing in common. Every teacher is paid for their class with barter items brought along by their students. Money has never changed hands.

There is a growing network of Trade Schools across the UK, Europe and the rest of the world. Alongside Norwich there are Trade Schools in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, York and Loughton in Essex. Internationally they can be found in Paris, Dublin, Athens and quite a few cities in Canada and the United States. All of them offering learning through barter.

The one immediate advantage of Trade School is that students do not have to pay for their classes with money. At Trade School Norwich we encourage teachers to ask for barter items that can easily be found at home (like a bag of flour) or can be bought cheaply in a charity shop (like a recipe book). The teachers get rewarded for their class with things that they want. 

As for teachers, the only qualification we ask for is that they have a passion or expertise that they would like to share with others. We believe that although not everybody is an expert everybody has some kind of expertise that can be shared. When somebody offers us a class we have to ‘approve’ the class but this is more to do with administration of the website rather than anything to do with the qualifications and experience of the teacher.

We’ve started to work with Union Learning Reps (ULRs) in Norwich. The ULRs can offer their knowledge of the learning needs of their members and to highlight some of the barriers that they face to access learning. That was one of the reasons why Trade School Norwich decided to run their classes at the city’s central library. In return ULRs can publicise Trade School Norwich classes to their members.

If there’s a Trade School active in your home town or city then you’ll find a link on the homepage of the Trade School website. They could offer your members plenty of informal learning opportunities and your input could also help them to offer more and different classes in the future.

http://tradeschool.coop