Save the Date for IPTW 2013

The 17th Annual International Preservation Trades Workshop will be conducted in partnership with the National Park Service, Historic Preservation Training Center. HPTC sponsored the 1st IPTW in 1997, the 10th in 2007, and has been a strong partner with PTN since the beginning. The National Park Service Historic Preservation Training Center shop facility at the historic Jenkins Cannery will be the main venue for the workshop and is located near the heart of Frederick’s historic and arts district. Check this site often for additional information.

Nominations are Open for the 2013 Askins Achievement Award

The Askins Achievement Award is named in honor of the James (Jim) S. Askinsthe founder of the National Park Service Historic Preservation Training Center. The award is given in recognition of outstanding contributions and accomplishments in the promotion, education, and application of preservation trade skills. The award has been presented annually by the Preservation Trades Network since 1998 at the International Preservation Trades Workshop (IPTW). The Askins Achievement Award recognizes contributions over and above the noteworthy. The award criteria includes contributions to the preservation trades for: the continuance of traditional building skills, advocacy of training in preservation trades, practicing a building trade at master level of skill and knowledge, and extraordinary effort given to advancing the awareness of traditional building trade skills and knowledge. The nominee should be an advocate of the trades from a trade’s background, and have contributed efforts above and beyond the norm to help move the trades’ community forward. The nominee should be a person who has helped raise the bar and challenged others to try harder. The Askins Achievement Award represents more than just quality work and good ethics it also means challenging others to work for the betterment of the community around them. Read more about the Askins Achievement Award and learn more about past recipients here.

Submit a Nomination for the 2013 Askins Achievement Award
Nominations for the 2013 Askins Achievement Award are now being accepted, and may be submitted until May 1, 2013. You do not have to be a member of PTN to make a nomination for the Askins Achievement Award. Nominations from previous years may be resubmitted, and are encouraged. The 2013 Askins Achievement award will be presented at IPTW 2012, Secptember 6-7, in Frederick, Maryland.

Download the Askins Award Guidelines and Nomination form.

Do you know where you are today?

Quite often folks ask, "What is the benefit of PTN?" Well, a benefit of membership in any community network is going to be in direct proportion to how involved you are in your community. Like this, if there is a PTN member near you then chances are pretty good that you are both interested in fixing up old buildings with tools and stuff like that. Reach out and contact them and see if they would like to share with you in a coffee/green tea/meditation/roach-coach break and talk about old buildings, the world, shop-talk, the weather, or how to do stuff like sharpen knives, cut stone, break bread, build bonfires, solder or glaze a window. So, the first benefit of PTN membership is the people that you get to meet. And in case you may wonder where all of these people are at, here is a map:

Network
The essential element of the Preservation Trades Network is the network. Why should we network? Because it empowers us in our lives, it reinforces and builds upon our individual talents and our personal values. It manifests through our ability and willingness to connect and share openly with others that takes us beyond our individual selves. Though membership is an important element of a healthy community, a network goes the next step and the next steps onward beyond the immediate community. To network is to continually reach out to other people and to new territory beyond ourselves.

Good Works
We intend through the practice of our combined trades to leave something of value behind us in the built environment, but more importantly we intend to honor values of traditional trade practice in our lives, in our teaching of others, and through our good works. Though we intend to do good work in our individual professions, the effect of good works is that as a community we provide something of value to enhance and celebrate the human condition within the cultural heritage of the built environment.

Community
We do not build and rebuild alone. We build with friends regardless if they be from any walk of life, any country, trade or profession. We share and bond in our experience of working together and with our coming together to build and rebuild we build community. We share of ourselves within community and live fully through our sense of service to our community.

Fellowship
We strive to know each other within our particular trade interest, but more importantly to know and to recognize each other across the interests of many variations of traditional trade practice, personal interests and diversity of professions.

Education
We want to teach others and we ourselves want to learn from each other and from others.