MRAC’s Grantee Spotlight is a new series to showcase the impact of MRAC’s funding across communities.
FIREWEED COMMUNITY WOODSHOP
Disciplines: Woodcrafts
MRAC Grant Program: Arts Impact for Groups 2023; Flexible Support 2023 and 2024
About This Grantee
Fireweed Community Woodshop is a Minneapolis based nonprofit that empowers women and marginalized genders through the art of woodcraft. What started out as a Do It Yourself (DIY) space in 2017, eventually evolved into a budding nonprofit. Fireweed offers programming in furniture making, craft, and handy person skills.
An inclusive woodworking space, Fireweed offers more than 205 woodworking classes for folks at all levels of woodcraft, prioritizing a pedagogy of nurture, experimentation, vulnerability, and trust. Fireweed’s equity-based pricing is a cornerstone of its values.
They offer a sliding scale, financial assistance, and sponsored BIPOC registration. Often, Fireweed’s classes are centered on folks who are frequently excluded from woodcraft; cultivating a welcoming space for BIPOC folks, women, and LGBTQI+ communities. Fireweeds’ community craft hangouts, celebrations, and panel discussions create a holistic approach to woodcraft community-building.
Fireweed Community Woodshop is a FY24 Flexible Support recipient and plans to use MRAC funding for operational support to program in-depth furniture making classes.
Impact Statement
“We’ve been around for about 7 years. Originally we were a DIY space. It all started because I was actually building a sculpture at a domestic abuse survivors shelter and there was a 12-year-old girl who started hanging around. We taught her how to use power tools and we saw her confidence skyrocket. She ended up building a playground off the sculpture. She designed it herself after a month of getting comfortable with the tools. That was really the spark that started Fireweed, seeing how life changing woodworking skills can be on a person.
Fast-forward a couple of years, it was time for me to move out of my mentor’s studio. I decided to rent a storefront space and put all my tools in it. I burnt out pretty fast. Running Fireweed as a DIY space and using all my own tools and maintaining them for a community shop was overwhelming. A group of volunteers in December of 2019 got together and said ‘Hey, we want to save the shop, let’s make it a nonprofit’ and I was like–great! I was ready to hand off this stuff to shift into more of a collective mindset, which is really more of the nature of Fireweed. We’re a community focused organization.
Of course, the pandemic hit a few months after we decided to become a nonprofit. We used that time to get our ducks in a row, to get our articles of incorporation filed, our bylaws written, all that heavy-paperwork-not-fun-woodworking stuff. We got our new space in July of 2022. It’s more than double our old space. Now we can hold two classes at a time. We’ve had 45 different instructors from around the world. During the pandemic we used that time to zoom in with people for classes.
At Fireweed, we create different entry points for people to learn more about woodworking for the first time, especially marginalized communities who may not feel welcomed in other woodworking spaces.
People tell us these amazing stories about how our woodworking classes have changed their lives. From transforming relationships with their parents, changing careers, to processing the deaths of loved ones, or being able to meditate and spoon carve while parents are going through hospice–we touch people at different places in their lives. We’re also a huge hub for making adult friendships, which can feel challenging at times, especially for people new to Minnesota.
Financially, our classes only cover half the costs of what we do. In addition to individual donations, we’re super dependent upon grants from funders like MRAC to help cover our rent, to cover staff salaries, and to help support our flexible pricing. Woodworking is super expensive. All of the tools are really expensive. For example, our table saw is $5,000. Having funders support our ability to sustain the work we do, empowers us to remain accessible to our communities. We have four different pricing options and funding from places like MRAC helps us keep those options available to our students. People from all walks of life can come into Fireweed where they’re at. Sometimes people might not need the sliding scale, but sometimes they do, so we’re grateful there are grants available to help us keep our pricing flexible for the over 1600 students who have already attended our workshops in this year alone.”
– Jess Hirsch, founder/pollinator, Fireweed Community Woodshop
Stay Connected
MRAC’s Grantee Spotlight is a new series to showcase the impact of MRAC’s funding across communities.
Stay connected with this month’s grantee:
Social Media
Instagram: @fireweedwoodshop #fireweedwoodshop
Upcoming events
Fireweed is hosting their annual family friendly Solstice Party
on June 20th, 2024, 5pm-7 pm at the shop: 14 SE 27th Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55414
More about the event from Jess:
“Its the year of the chair so expect some goofy chair themed games plus an ice cream bar, and a pop up shop to support our programing. Its a great time to meet instructors, students, board members, and fellow woodworking friends! Families welcome (we are putting all the sharp tools out of reach and will have kids coloring sheets)!”