Inside the Cork wood craft and upcycling class attracting adults from 18 to 78 

The first thing you notice when you enter the Wood Craft and Upcycling class at the Cork College of FET Tramore Road Campus is the noise.

Not just the noise of the woodworking equipment - although there are plenty of drills and sanders at the workbenches - but chatting, laughter and, on the last week of term in December, Christmas music playing over the classroom speaker.

“I’ve always loved woodcraft because it can be both a solitary activity and a social one, depending on what you want,” course teacher Brendan Power tells me.

At Tramore Road Campus, it’s clear to see that for the students - 16 in total, from all walks of life - the class is a social, supportive environment. When I visit, the students are busy working on individual projects but they all move around the room, admiring each other’s work and sharing words of encouragement. Brendan and his teaching assistant, Pádraig Walsh, offer support and advice.

Pádraig can easily put himself in the students’ shoes, as he was part of the 2024/25 cohort, the first year the course ran. A bus driver for 40 years, he completed the Culture and Heritage Studies qualification at the College of FET in 2018, becoming a tour guide in Charles Fort.

Always a lover of art and DIY - and keen to return to Tramore Road Campus - he searched for a course that would align with his passions. Furniture Making was an option, but it contained computer-aided design elements that didn’t interest him. Wood Craft and Upcycling was, he says, “more practical for my liking”.

The course teaches traditional methods of craft and design - old-school drawings with pencil and paper. Pádraig loved it, and a year later, he’s assisting Brendan in the classroom.

He still engages in his own projects and is currently working on a sunflower-shaped shelf. He’s also made a ratchet table, a phone holder in the shape of a bear, and has repurposed his daughter’s old barstool into a chair for his grandson.

Brendan, in the gentlest way possible, throws the students into the deep end on their very first week of the course by tasking them with making a chair. Despite no previous woodwork experience being necessary - and indeed, many of the students were total beginners - they had each made their own chair by the end of week one in September.

“It was the most empowering thing,” student Lynn Wolfe declares, as she takes a short break from painting her chair a vibrant red.

Lynn did a course in horticulture last year, which she enjoyed, but Wood Craft and Upcycling has unlocked something special in her.

“It’s fabulous,” she enthuses, showing me a chess set she’s made out of offcuts. No wood goes to waste around here, as further demonstrated by a charming little Christmas tree made by Cecilia Kareem.

As Barbara Barford - who spent her working life in an office but is now unleashing her creative side on the course - says, “every person in this room has a flair for something”.

Like Pádraig and a number of other students on the course, Macroom-based Catherine O’Riordan previously completed the Culture and Heritage Studies course at the college.

“I made great friends here, loved the people and the atmosphere around the college”, she says. Catherine can sew and knit, but this is her first time undertaking any woodwork. “I’ve loved it. Even at my level, I can find things that I enjoy. Brendan is brilliant - he just makes you feel like you’re doing stuff!”

‘Doing stuff’, Catherine certainly is - not just her week-one chair (“a lot of pulling and hauling and swearing!”), but a stool, wood carvings, and chopping boards which were created by the whole class in aid of Marymount Hospice, raising €1,770 for the charity.

Catherine is undertaking the course “just for the enjoyment”, but for some, it is hopefully the start of a career in craftmanship.

Damien O’Donnell, of Charleville, enjoyed woodwork in school, he tells me as he whittles a snowman - a festive side project. As a recent school-leaver, what does he hope to get out of the course? “More knowledge and skills, which might hopefully open the door into other courses.”

The age range of the students in Woodcraft and Upcycling is striking - from 18 to 78. Even more striking is that, regardless of age, everyone gets along. “It’s intergenerational interaction. That’s the beauty of it,” says Carrigaline-based student Karen O’Halloran, who thought she’d “stick out like a sore thumb amongst all the youngsters”.

Pharmaceutical company retiree Siobhán O’Regan agrees: “It’s just been fantastic. The younger people have great interaction with the older people - the mix in the class is brilliant. It has a kind of community feel.”

Siobhán describes herself as “not creative, not artistic” - yet she, along with her classmates, has contributed multiple pieces of tiny furniture for the miniature Irish country kitchen, a group project inspired by the passion for culture and heritage shared by many of the students.

The kitchen is a work in progress, and currently contains, among other things, tiny, intricate replicas of kitchen furniture, a box of cornflakes, a coffin, and even a copy of the Holly Bough!

Many of the students have a talent for art and design, such as 18-year-old Charlie Tuschewski. She did woodwork at school, but didn’t actually like it that much. “It’s just a better environment here,” she tells me. “It’s a lot easier to get stuff done.”

Catherine is encouraged to follow her artistic passions. “Brendan gave me a piece of wood because I like doing pyrography, he knew that I’d enjoy it”.

Brendan is keen to empower his students to choose their own paths, particularly the youngsters just starting out in life.

“Teaching young people coming straight out of secondary school takes time. They need to develop and socialise... I’m like, right - let’s just get them working with their hands, then just let them go in their own direction. The young people come out of themselves throughout the whole year.”

As a Level 5 qualification, the course is an excellent first step for anyone wishing to pursue a career in any craft discipline. There are no exams, with students assessed on a project basis. When they graduate from Wood Craft and Upcycling, they can go on to pursue a Level 6 course such as Furniture Making or similar, or eventually go on to do a degree.

Originally from Dublin, Brendan has lived in Cork since 2008. He has a degree in engineering, but has a long history with craftmanship, from working as a furniture maker to living in a yurt he built himself, before becoming a teacher.

As someone who was upcycling before it was cool, how does he explain the rise in popularity of the repurposing and DIY mindset?

“I think we just don’t like throwing things out! But also, 100 years ago, the furniture in houses had stories attached to them. Like, so-and-so made this piece, Paddy down the lane built that dresser. If you have a chair at home you got from somewhere, and you keep it and upcycle it and it has its own story, then you know, it’s not just some piece from Ikea. It has a story to it.”

Upcycling is also a response to the disposable society that we live in. Cork city based student Tim Buckley aims to be as self-sufficient as possible, and decided to do the course to learn the craft of woodworking, noting that these kinds of trades are dying out:

“Something breaks, we chuck it away. You know, it’s easier to buy stuff than to fix it or make it. But stuff like that doesn’t last forever, you might as well get stuck into learning [how to make your own] somehow”.

The Woodcraft and Upcycling course is provided free of charge by the Cork ETB. It runs three-and-a-half days a week (Monday to Thursday), with field trips throughout the year, and follows the school calendar. All tools and materials are provided.

Brendan is consistently inspired by the drive and passion of his students.

“The one thing all students leave with is confidence in themselves. Every year, I’m amazed at what they are making. They get so into it. Some even take tools home with them to do late-night woodcarving at the kitchen table!”

Looking around the room, it’s not hard to see this passion. Learning invaluable skills, building life-long friendships and potentially even carving out new career paths - no wonder the students of Wood Craft and Upcycling love their course so much.

Applications are open for next year’s course, which will run from September, 2026. For more information and to apply, visit Cork College of FET Tramore Road Campus website at https://tramoreroadcampus.ie/our-courses/engineering-construction/wood-craft-and-upcycling/