---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Schumacher Center for a New Economics < [email protected]> Date: Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 9:48 PM Subject: Applied Craftsmanship To: <[email protected]> view this email in your browser <https://mailchi.mp/centerforneweconomics.org/applied-craftsmanship-504345?e=639a116680> <https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=613bcf294a&e=639a116680> <https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=d6e4993804&e=639a116680> BerkShares posters line the hallway of the newly renovated Schumacher Library Dear Michel Bauwens, In a January 2020 article for *Craftsmanship Quarterly,* “Could Small Still Be Beautiful?”, Bryce Bauer writes of the continuing influence of economist E. F. Schumacher. In the process he captures the forty-year sweep of the work of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics. An excerpt of his article is reprinted below with permission of the publisher. You can read the full article here <https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=ce88fc6343&e=639a116680> and, on The Craftsmanship Initiative’s website <https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=f773633837&e=639a116680>, become a follower of the magazine at no fee. On February 3rd the contractors completed their 10 months of work renovating the Schumacher Center’s Library <https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=9c0dd131bd&e=639a116680> and Offices. <https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=1b58ea1ad4&e=639a116680>The cleaning crew worked all day on the 4th to make everything sparkle. Then that Thursday it was all hands on deck to move books and archival collections into their new climate controlled environment; unpack dishes and place them on shelves in the new kitchen; wash linens covered in sawdust and set them in order in the two new bathrooms; arrange the librarian’s workspace downstairs; hang paintings; unroll rug, table, and chairs for the video conferencing room; and re-arrange the “big” room upstairs now with more space for convening. Team Schumacher was up to the task, even adding a new flowering jasmine in celebration! Painters and carpenters from left to right: Dan Ferron, Kealan Rooney, Tim Seddon, Steven Seddon Sr., Bob Hartman, Devon Guy All just in time for a group of twenty-two persons arriving from around the country on that Friday for a two-day gathering to discuss the cultural roots of the climate crisis and how philanthropists could best engage in creating solutions. It was a perfect setting for the discussion facilitated by Otto Scharmer and Arthur Zajonc. The conversation moved from inside the library to the walking trails outside and uphill on Jug End Mountain with stunning views across the Berkshire valley. Break out groups found plenty of corners in the stacks of books downstairs, and the office spaces upstairs for one on one conversations. Gathering in the "big" room at the Schumacher Library It is a building meant to serve the next forty years of the Schumacher Center’s work. Our thanks to the many friends of the Center that donated to make Bob Swann’s original vision for the building a reality. Gratefully, Schumacher Center Staff View photos of the renovation on our website <https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=792505ad2f&e=639a116680>.
From the January 2020 edition of Craftsmanship Quarterly By Bryce Bauer
*Located in the undulating hills of the Southern Berkshires, off the charmingly named Jug End Road near Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the Schumacher Center is a living emblem of Schumacherian modesty and elegance. When I arrived there for a visit of several days, to check up on what has become of Schumacher’s ideas in the four decades since his death, Witt, the center’s director, began her answer by touring me through two of the center’s buildings — its library and her own house. Both had been designed and partially built by the center’s co-founder and her late partner Bob Swann, a carpenter who had previously worked on houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. And both displayed the famous architect’s human-scale gracefulness. The grounds feature a large garden, surrounded by an extensive apple orchard. After “Small Is Beautiful” came out, Swann helped organize Schumacher’s 1977 tour of the United States; Schumacher, in turn, asked Swann to help carry out his ideas in America. Originally designed to be the forum for a Schumacher-inspired lecture series, the scope of the organization grew over the years, as did the intellectual spheres from which it drew. Critical among the ideas it subsumed were those of the great urban development theorist, Jane Jacobs, who spoke at the center in 1984. In one of her books, “The Economy of Cities,” Jacobs argued that places develop when they start to produce products locally that they previously imported from far away. Following her speech, Jacobs became a supporter of the center and wrote about its projects in her later books. When I asked Michael Shuman, an economist and consultant who has written several books on local economies, how he viewed the center’s work, he said, “I think the Schumacher center under Susan’s leadership has been the most important laboratory for social invention that serves the local economy in the world.” Shuman credits the center with helping to push forward ideas that have now become mainstream, like crowd funding, and for keeping work on local economies anchored in an intellectual context. Today, the Schumacher Center operates primarily as a library and think-tank, focused on three broad areas: helping communities gain greater control over their land; supporting businesses that provide products and services for local consumption, so that profits stay at home; and fostering face-to-face relationships to offset, or even reverse, the harms of scale that Schumacher identified. 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