When I was at school, there were Adult Education centres, or night schools, which taught much cooler stuff than I was learning. I longed for the time that I could learn welding or woodworking instead of practicing handwriting. By the time I was an adult, these education centres had mostly closed.

Those that haven’t closed now focus on either soft-skills, employability, or block release apprenticeships. They aren’t at all geared up to the hobbyist or dabbler.

For a time I think there was a void, but it feels like it’s being filled. Just watch this beautifully produced video from Frank Howarth where he teaches how to build a lawn chair.

Online, there is a solid business model in providing freemium training videos. For programming there are screencasts, but there are also video producers for many mainstream activities now. And the quality of their productions is amazing.

Ryan Bates runs [Railscasts](http://railscasts.com/], where he has produced a couple of videos each week since early 2007. Some videos are free, the more advanced videos are only for subscribers. Subscribing is $9 a month, and my feeling is that he has at least 3,000 subscribers - a very healthy income.

Marc Spagnuolo has a similar format for woodworking. He publishes some videos free to Youtube, but also runs a paid-for community called the Wood Whisperer Guild where plans are provided and lengthier projects tackled.

Again with woodworking, Steve Ramsey runs a Youtube channel called Woodworking for Mere Mortals which has 140,000 subscribers. He doesn’t seem to have any premium content - but recently has been experimenting with a kickstarter-style subscription platform called Subbable.

Painting a car? There’s LearnAutoBodyAndPaint.com. Learning a language? Try Radio Lingua.

The real world

Some skills can’t be learned from videos. I tried learning to plaster by watching Mastering Plastering, a well produced training DVD. Complete waste of time.

But earlier this year I did a four-day plastering course at The DIY School and since then I’ve got fairly good at skimming walls and ceilings. If I went to a publicly funded college to learn plastering, I’d be going through an application process, paying more and spending two evenings a week for A WHOLE YEAR.

Up the amateurs.