Walking along a city street in Rhode Island, you do a double-take, smile, maybe nudge a companion and point to a trash can or bike rack, tree guard or bench.
It could take you a minute to realize you are looking at artwork masquerading as common sidewalk gear. In several cities, chances are high that this moment of grace was brought to you by metal artisans from The Steel Yard.
Since 2000, the nonprofit arts center of the West Side of Providence has been a place to do and teach welding, ceramics, jewelry making and other muscular art forms. Since about 2008, it has increasingly become a place where people of low income and few career opportunities can learn basic skills of metal fabrication, and possibly get a toehold into the workforce.
If it was a Steel Yard creation, that curvaceous trash can or sinuous park bench or wacky-looking bike rack that grabbed your eye was created by the Public Projects department, under contract with municipalities. The project might have used students in The Steel Yard’s Weld-to-Work training program.
In 2017, The Steel Yard won a $10,000 grant from the national PeopleForBikes Coalition to create 35 bike racks and install them in 16 Ocean State cities and towns. Weld-to-Work students attacked the project with creativity and gusto, and the structures began popping up early this fall in places with heavy bicycle use.
You’d be forgiven for not knowing these are bike racks if no bike is attached. In nine designs, they are brightly colored, and formed with strange shapes, angles, openings and protuberances. They are carefully designed to do their job, based on criteria for height, stability, two points of contact and other factors.
As important, they gave their student creators a sense of achievement.
One Weld-to-Work grad wrote to Margo Karoff-Hunger, The Steel Yard’s workforce coordinator, “Sometimes it seems like life comes to a standstill, that getting back in the game just gets harder and harder. The folks at The Steel Yard … gave me the encouragement to find the faith in myself again.”
Requirements for Weld-to-Work are short: at least 18 years old, with an income at or below poverty level. Participants are historically underserved or underemployed. They may be aging out of foster care, fighting homelessness, coming out of prison, recent immigrants, or simply people with few job skills. They are paid to attend the one-week, 30-hour class.
“At the beginning [of the course], they didn’t even know how to turn on the machines, and by the end they have created and fabricated something to improve their community,” Karoff-Hunger added. “Getting paid to be creative is a wonderful experience.” She said Weld-to-Work has given basic training to about 175 beginning metal workers since its inception.
Success in Weld-to-Work, she said, “can be the spark to take them to the next step and to move forward in their lives.”
[caption id="attachment_178302" align="aligncenter" width="640"]
TAKING SHAPE: Participants in The Steel Yard’s Weld-to-Work program work on bike racks installed this year in 16 Rhode Island communities. / COURTESY THE STEEL YARD[/caption]
Weld-to-Work uses a creative-curriculum approach, which emphasizes working with the whole person, teaching social skills, employing teamwork and developing communication skills.
Future employment after Weld-to-Work is a realistic dream for many grads. The one-week class covers basics of metal fabricating, and a Weld-to-Work 2.0 class builds on the basics.
Some Weld-to-Work grads have been hired by The Steel Yard for public projects or as instructors. Some have gone on to work for private businesses, including Blount Boats Inc., a Warren shipyard. Some entered New England Institute of Technology.
In fact, Rhode Island industry needs more trained metal workers, said Karoff-Hunger and Tim Ferland, The Steel Yard’s public projects director, himself a graduate of Weld-to-Work.
In a 2016 essay for Carolina Planning Journal, Karoff-Hunger wrote, “Industrially based companies find it harder and harder to replace employees who leave their positions. … in Rhode Island, the state Department of Labor and Training projects that between 2012 and 2022, 34.5 percent of welding, cutting, soldering and brazing positions will be left unfilled.”
In fact, The Steel Yard wants to expand its jewelry-making courses because the jewelry makers that still exist and thrive in the state will be needing a new generation of bench jewelers in coming years.
The benefits of learning useful job skills are obvious for the learner. People at The Steel Yard also believe strongly in the value of public art, especially in neighborhoods that have slid into disuse, poverty and some unsightliness.
“You beautify an area with handmade products,” said Jenny Sparks, client relations manager. “Public art makes places safer, and there’s less vandalism.” She said the bike racks and other projects, including cool-looking trash cans and benches, “[are] a sneaky way to get art into places that don’t have a budget for it, or have very little art in general.”
