Hi, my name is Ben Caballero. I am the Woodshop Champion and a board member at Mitchell Street Arts. Mitchell Street Arts is a community-focused art gallery and art space where we have free art classes. I teach a couple of classes that are project-focused and some that are more skill-focused. I would say probably 60 to 70 percent of the people that take my classes for the first time have never touched a tool before in their life. Most people are at least two or three steps removed away from knowing how to make anything, even fix anything in their home. And so having the opportunity to make something, being able to do that and bring it home is really just an amazing opportunity.

So in a lot of traditional academic spaces there's not a lot of opportunity or room for creativity or to kind of challenge what is going on in the class.
I was somebody who had issues with more of the rules of what I can and can't do. And so it was always very frustrating for me in school. Coming to our classes, they're able to do things creatively that they would not be able to do in a traditional class. I like to think that my classes are absolutely teaching life skills of one being more confident with tools and being able to fix things in your home. If you can't afford to pay somebody to fix a piece of furniture that breaks or whatever, if you come to my classes and you learn those skills, then you know how to do it yourself. And you get a lot of power just by learning how to do that yourself.

My work I like to think is very traditional in a lot of ways. I focus on each project and build it as something that's intended to be handed down. Most stuff is made to last like five or ten years. I think really traditional, especially American craft, is something that we're building and you're building it to pass down to the next generation. Whether it be the skills that you're learning or the physical product that you're making.