Children aged five to 15 in Altadena can sign up for a free six-week woodworking series at Loma Alta Park, offering hands-on craft skills while the organisation transitions to new leadership.
Families in Altadena will have a chance this month to sign children up for a free six-week woodworking series run by Pasadena’s Side Street Projects, with classes beginning on 9 September at Loma Alta Park, the temporary home of the Altadena Library.
The after-school programme is being offered on Wednesday afternoons in two one-hour sessions, and children are expected to attend all six classes, especially the first. Side Street Projects says participants aged five to 15 will work only with hand tools, building wooden toys from templates that include cars, animals and planes while learning basic workshop skills such as sanding, sawing, shaping, drilling, clamping, hammering and incising. Each class is limited to 15 students, and children will take their finished pieces home.
The workshop series comes as the artist-run non-profit prepares for a leadership transition. Side Street Projects has said Emily Hopkins will step down this autumn after nearly 17 years with the organisation, while the board continues its search for a successor. Hopkins joined the group in 2002 as a teaching artist, took over its woodworking programme the following year and became executive director in 2010, according to a 2019 interview with Voyage LA. The organisation says she remains in post during the handover.
Side Street Projects, founded in 1992 by artists Karen Atkinson and Joe Luttrell, describes itself as a mobile organisation built around do-it-yourself and do-it-together principles. According to the Pasadena Community Foundation, which funded its shipping-container classroom in 2016, the group says it serves more than 1,000 adults and 4,000 children a year across Pasadena and Altadena. Its August skillshare featured a plein air watercolour session led by Altadena artist Keni Arts, while a community day on 13 September will include a mixed-media self-portrait workshop and a separate youth woodworking session, both requiring registration.
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