Boards to beauty: Free Skills Shop helps people in Thompson upskill in trades

Sanuda Ranawake · CBC News

· Posted: May 06, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

In a small, erstwhile warehouse successful Thompson, Payton Chuckrey and others larn however to marque cutting boards retired of a plain plank of unsmooth wood — for free. 

"My aunt asked if I wanted to travel and physique immoderate worldly with her. I went, 'Heck yes I do,'" Chuckrey told CBC News. 

Skills Shop North offers Thompson residents the accidental to upskill successful a assortment of trades, including woodworking and welding, and hosts a assortment of escaped workshops while besides giving radical the accidental to travel successful connected their ain clip and enactment connected their ain projects for free. 

The caller acquisition facility, a not-for-profit funded done national and provincial authorities grants, opened successful precocious 2024 aft the closure of Thompson FabLab, a akin enactment that provided workshops successful the aforesaid abstraction but made the abstraction disposable with a paid membership.

Skills Shop North is free, which is simply a cardinal difference, said Jordan Ilott, a manager and unpaid teacher astatine Skills Shop North, who besides creates his ain projects and utilized to unpaid for Thompson FabLab. 

Chuckrey said the store she did was besides an accidental to enslaved with her aunt, Patricia Preston, who had ne'er worked connected wood before. 

Participants started with unsmooth planks of wood, chopped them down and processed them into wood cutting boards with customized designs over the span of a weekend. 

"I emotion skulls. I person skulls everywhere, and truthful I decided to spell with a skull to correspond my hubby and a skull to correspond myself. And truthful present we person the Chuckrey's Kitchen cutting board," Chuckrey said. 

Fellow subordinate Heather Hildebrandt's plan came from her furry friend. 

"I americium benignant of a brainsick canine idiosyncratic and I person an Irish wolfhound astatine home, and he's my baby. So I enactment his sanction on, I enactment him connected there, truthful I'll person thing of him," she said. 

Hildebrandt had immoderate woodworking acquisition going into the program, but she was waiting for the accidental to signifier and refine her skills. 

"My begetter was into woodworking since I was a small kid, and helium benignant of dragged maine into it, due to the fact that I was a tomboy," she said. 

"So I've been funny successful this worldly forever, and we haven't had immoderate accidental to bash immoderate of this successful Thompson. And erstwhile I heard astir this, I conscionable jumped astatine the chance."

Ilott said erstwhile participants are certified connected the machinery aft a workshop, they are allowed to enactment connected their ain projects astatine Skills Shop whenever it's open, and the possibilities are endless. 

"In this facility, we person the tremendous imaginable to marque conscionable astir thing you tin imagine, due to the fact that we person a afloat fledged woodworking and furnishings cabinetry workshop," helium said. 

For Ilott, the spot is besides an accidental to socialize and conscionable radical from Thompson. 

Classes are presently not regularly scheduled, but Ilott hopes they'll beryllium capable to get backing and grants for more, which would fto much radical usage the abstraction for their ain originative endeavours, including opportunities to commencement businesses.