Many will remember the space as the former Brattleboro School of Dance. Along the three flights of stairs at 22 High St. is the familiar dark gray, worn a bit more, but with cool signage - made from wood, of course - pointing to HatchSpace.
Consisting of five shop spaces in 8,000 square feet, the nonprofit states its mission is "to celebrate and advance the learning, practice, and cultural varieties of woodworking. We provide anyone with access to the tools and training necessary to build the things they love."
"All are welcome here," it's said on the HatchSpace website, and "financial assistance is always available to anyone experiencing hardship. Historically marginalized people including women and members of the [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] and [gender nonconforming] communities are welcome here."
HatchSpace offers a range of classes on various schedules, from bowl turning and wood finishing to kerf bending and workshop essentials. Private instruction is also available.
Members (at $49 monthly) have access to the third-floor power and hand tools and the second-floor digital fabrication space, which offers a full-scale CNC (computer numerical control) router, as well as laser cutting and advanced milling equipment.
I had a chance recently to talk with HatchSpace's executive director, Lars Hasselblad Torres, and its education coordinator, Jesse Pompei. With long racks of wood and workshop classrooms behind us, we sat at a massive worktable talking over the steady buzz of machines.
Hasselblad Torres, with a background in developmental economics and the arts - primarily photography - had moved from Washington, D.C. to run the Generator Makerspace in Burlington before taking over at Artisans Asylum in Boston.
"I burnt out on that and was looking to get back to Vermont," he says - and then, somebody introduced him to Tom Bodett, the founder of HatchSpace, "and here we are."
The leadership of HatchSpace, opened in 2019 under the direction of Greg Goodman, then shut down by Covid, was assumed by Hasselblad Torres in March 2022.
Pompei started her career life as a journalist, then became smitten with woodworking and design and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in furniture design from the Savannah College of Art and Design before doing a 20-year stint as an elementary school teacher.
She'd worked seasonally for Snow Farm: The New England Craft Program in her hometown of Williamsburg, Massachusetts and eventually left teaching and "came to HatchSpace to work because there is no open shop like this in western Mass."
"I came to use the space and then one thing led to another, and in April of 2023 Lars reached out for a new education coordinator," Pompei says.
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Annie Landenberger: Where else would one go to find something like HatchSpace in this region?
Lars Hasselblad Torres: You say "like HatchSpace," and there are not any like this. We have a beautiful wood inventory because we are primarily a woodworking space. We're a community workshop: we're open to everyone.
Maker spaces tend to skew white, male, older, nerdy. I've been in a lot of them, trust me. Jesse does an amazing job at making this space open and accessible to women.
Jesse Pompei: I don't mind saying that can sometimes be a barrier - not only being a woman, but also your level of skill. There are other spaces that feel unwelcoming to women, to people of color, to those of a particular skill level.
Anyone can enter this space and feel like they're a woodworker.
L.H.T.: And the LGBTQIA community. Our simple mission is to make the joy and benefits of woodworking accessible to everyone.
A.L.: But before anyone actually can touch a tool they need to go through a training?
J.P.: We offer a tool test, and we walk people through the tools with the intention of their being able to come to work here independently.
L.H.T.: People come to us with different skill levels: If someone comes to us with prior knowledge, we don't want to waste their time with a remedial woodworking class when they could get to work right away on that passion project that brought them in here.
If you say you're qualified, we say, 'Give it a go on our test.' And if someone needs a refresher, Jesse does a good job at pairing them with the right level of class or private instruction that preps them for the test.
J.P.: There's no charge for the test; there is for the instruction, unless they get a scholarship.
L.H.T.: We gave away $4,500 in scholarships this year.
A.L.: What about special needs?
L.H.T.: Not yet. We're looking to build programs for people in recovery to derive some therapeutic and developmental benefits from woodworking, but we haven't done it yet because it's really expensive relative to what we can make to have a staff member dedicated to one-on-one support. We're slowly growing into it.
A.L.: What is Tom Bodett's level of involvement at HatchSpace these days?
L.H.T.: Soup to nuts. He's obviously the founder and he remains the visionary, the big-hearted driver of this thing. That said, we're trying to create more room for young, new voices, for fresh talent to manage where that very big-hearted involvement is.
Tom doesn't have to run it now. He can transition to the founder role. He's very talented, and he's used to getting very involved, hands-on. There's no question he's our biggest champion ally, kind of a big uncle.
J.P.: Mascot.
L.H.T.: Cheerleader.
J.P.: He has set the tone for all the things Lars and I have been talking about with the welcoming and community. That started with his vision.
A.L.: For folks who've been using the hand and power tools, has their interest in digital fabrication been piqued knowing that that facility is downstairs? Do you think some will want to move on and explore there?
L.H.T.: Yes, but I think the real hesitancy is the software barrier. That makes the argument for "why I'm a hand-tool guy," because they just don't want to learn the software. And that's fine.
J.P.: I want to learn Shaper Origin [a hand-held CNC router] so badly. It can enhance - add some detail - to what I do, not take away. But it can be a barrier for anyone, and so we say, "Listen, in a three-hour class - you can learn this."
A.L.: What percentage of work done here is digital fabrication?
L.H.T.: A much smaller percentage, maybe 5 or 10%.
A.L.: I'm curious: What do you think about digital versus hand- or power-tool made when it comes to craft?
L.H.T.: I would say digital and handmade. In my opinion, craft processes have always relied on innovation. Just think about steel at the most basic level: How do you get a sharp edge? There's a lot of technology and innovation involved and, if we discount that, we're doing a disservice to the industries that have supported craft over the years.
CNC machines are just an augment to the process. There is no substitute for the human hand, but there's a world of choice about where to apply it.
J.P.: There are schools in which it's hand tools or nothing. Computer-aided is going against tradition. But I'm of the school of "Yeah, I can wash my clothes down by the river, or I can use the washing machine."
I just put a class on the calendar on how to make dovetails using a jig. Yes, there is an art to making hand-cut dovetails that is tied in with a level of craftsmanship and history and perfection. And, yes, there is a fine eye that can tell the difference between a handmade dovetail and a machine-made one, but if you're looking to just make a dovetail-
L.H.T.: The economy has moved on, and for us to be relevant and supportive and responsive to the next generation of crafts, we can't stand on hubris. I have friends who use the CNC machine in their craft, though one may or may not know it.
There is a quality of digital design that's not natural to the hand. It's only through the math of algorithms and polygonal structures that you come up with this unique design that frankly would be almost impossible to create by hand.
A.L.: So who teaches the Shaper Origin class?
J.P.: One of our board members, Andrew Cunningham, who also runs our BIPOC Maker Night every Monday that's affiliated with The Root Social Justice Center.
L.H.T.: We maintain that every Monday as a space for them to come together and make, showing them what HatchSpace is all about so that they can come back here as makers and continue what they've started doing.
A.L.: What kind of outreach are you doing with high school kids?
J.P.: We started a program in November for home schoolers ages 12 to 18. I've reached out to a couple of high schools with the idea of offering internships. That's in the future; it could just be a great partnership.
So far, we have a lot of middle and high school offerings. We've also done camps specifically for middle school girls: Rosie's Girls, in collaboration with Vermont Works for Women. We've offered skateboard making classes for middle school kids on up.
Everything we're trying to do is about community, and that's Tom's message, too.
A.L.: You're building community, but also when you expose kids to a set of tools - whatever they may be - you're potentially opening up a career path.
L.H.T.: To that point, we do work with BDCC [Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation]. We go to their career pathway fairs three or four times a year; we'll show up and offer woodworking-as-a-trade pathways.
We try to work with them to expand the narrative about the workforce shortage and the really good livelihood that can be made in woodworking. We put ourselves in the middle to bridge the gap.
A.L.: What are your plans for HatchSpace?
L.H.T.: We have three areas we're focused on short- and long-term.
First, to grow our education offerings from bespoke one-off classes to those that are very nicely scaffolded so you can progress upward in your skills acquisition over time.
We want to turn that into a more explicit workforce development pipeline, so if you do 40 hours on the table saw you can get a certificate, for instance. Construction math, shop safety - we want to orient what we're doing naturally here with the needs of workforce development.
The second is entrepreneurial support - every now and then, someone will come in who says, "I want to make this thing" - a line of chairs, meditation stools, carved spoons, whatever.
So what we can do right now is support them with producing prototypes, but we'd like to get to a place where we could be more of an incubator - where they could actually crank out their first hundred units.
The third is to look at retail in two areas.
One, to provide fee-for-service design and fabrication work. We have the talent, so let's match it up with the market of need. The second is product. How can we help someone be even more successful in selling that product, leveraging our market visibility, partnership, etc. etc.?
Also, within that there's this community layer. We know we want to launch this program for people in recovery, but the basic idea is: How can we support people in recovery by making the benefits of woodworking accessible and to support those in need to generate income?
We want to continue our partnership with Vermont Works for Women, too.
J.P.: And we want to continue to grow opportunities for young folks. The feedback I have received from parents is that there is such a need for this - not just for workforce building, but also the building of confidence. Maybe they don't want to become a woodworker for their career, but now they have seen what is possible by using their hands and tools, which can then lead to other opportunities.
It's opening opportunities for children, teens, young adults, women, people of color, LGBTQIA.
L.H.T.: Linking that to Tom [Bodett], it's connecting what we're doing at HatchSpace with the broader vision of this building. High Street and Green. This is Tom and Rita's [Ramirez, Bodett's wife] legacy project.
The core idea is to build a one-stop shop in downtown Brattleboro. Maybe it's not going to be wood, but as a result of being here, a young person can get to know Dan [Chiaccio] in First Proof Press [a community printmaking facility in the building], and they're able to combine their creative confidence in wood carving with block print making.
Who knows? We want this building to be a place where once you've got that confidence you can discover other creative pathways. It could be ceramics, it could be photography, but here's where you can unleash that curiosity.
J.P.: There's also the idea of a couple or a group of folks coming for the weekend, each taking different workshops - a ceramics workshop, a photography class, woodworking - and then all coming together to share a meal at A Vermont Table [a restaurant also in the building].
This four-story building houses a multitude of opportunities.
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For more information on HatchSpace, its classes, and other offerings, benefits, and scope, visit hatchspace.org.
Samplings of work by HatchSpace staff, stewards, members and volunteers is on view and for sale at the HatchSpace Harmony Lot gallery through Sunday, Dec. 24. See the website for shopping hours.
Annie Landenberger is an arts writer and columnist for The Commons. She remains involved with the Rock River Players, the community theater that she founded and directed for years. She also is one half of the musical duo Bard Owl, with partner T. Breeze Verdant.
This The Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.