In 1989, Hurricane Hugo devastated the coastline of South Carolina. In the aftermath, as historic homes and buildings were being repaired, many homeowners looked for plaster workers or stone carvers. To everyone’s surprise, there weren’t many left, resulting in a massive backlog of restoration and preservation work.
In response, a group of inspired educators founded the American College of Building Arts (ACBA) in Charleston. Their vision is to restore the crafts of tradesmen and tradeswomen. Modeled after the French system of the Compagnons du Devoir,
they are trying to reproduce the medieval guild system in the contemporary world. A guild did two things. First, it policed its craft. Guilds, rather than the government, set and oversaw standards, deciding who was qualified and what was quality.
(True, there was limited entry access; today, thanks to a push toward equality, disadvantaged people, women, and minorities can more freely enter the trades, and we are better for it.) Second, training was open and shared.
Because apprentices were part of the guild, they had a wealth of resources to draw on and masters to learn from. Unlike today’s business world, it was not primarily competition that spurred the guilds forward, but a desire to do good work and become better craftsmen.
