Trade School: The Act of Bartering Skills for Creatives

The recession has thrown up new and innovative ways for skill sharing.  Enter Trade School, a range of classes that centralizes the act of barter and exchange.  In an era when individuals are looking to develop their careers or talents, but lack the funds to commit to traditional courses, Trade School is a pop up classroom in New York City’s Lower East Side,  allowing for a way to learn but not be out of pocket.

Bushwick based Caroline Woolard founded OurGoods, the online bartering network she conceptualized along with Jen Abrams, Louise Ma, Carl Tashian and Rich Watts who decided to pool their shared resources and teach one another skills that the other did not possess.

OurGoods has the capability of matching creative people with what they ‘have’ with what they ‘need. So far over 150 ‘alpha users’ have posted skills ranging from photography to singing; from composting to the business of social entrepreneurship, even Scrabble for Beginners.

The storefront school is the physical space of online bartering network OurGoods, allowing members an opportunity to meet the people who they are bartering with and honor the exchange in a personal way.

Grand Opening were the first to provide the storefront space for Trade School’s first term, however other partnerships are in the works to host the classes in a variety of spaces across the city, including potentially Brooklyn.

See our previous coverage of Trade School here.

[via Brooklyn Based]