A rickety career ladder

In the UK, since opportunities for recent lutherie graduates are few and far between, many are turning to self-employment to make ends meet

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Libby Summers set up her own workshop in mid-2020, despite the pandemic

ZOË NOYES

Graduates fresh out of UK violin making schools typically look to gain several years’ experience in a shop or workshop before setting up on their own. But amid the Covid pandemic, new graduates, like their peers in other sectors, have found vacancies and placements harder to come by. A combination of lockdowns, international travel restrictions and shops having less business from professional musicians has created a challenging set of circumstances, and while some graduates anticipate more work opportunities as trade and travel increase and professional musical life picks up, others have already chosen selfemployment as the way forward.

Eunju Lee, who graduated from West Dean College in 2020 after two years there and a previous two years studying violin making at Merton College in London, had been set to move to London with her husband and daughter to work in a large shop.

‘I always wanted to be a maker rather than a restorer,’ she says. ‘But I wanted to pursue working in a workshop because I felt I needed to support my family, and because I thought it was the typical path to follow. But the pandemic situation constrained my options, and I decided to take the opportunity to focus on Baroque instrument making.’ Lee knew musicians from playing in an amateur orchestra, and so was able to get some repair and maintenance work to support her making. She also found there were some advantages to starting out independently during the pandemic: ‘In lockdown, musicians were approaching me with work because lots of shops were closed, and because these musicians wanted to support smaller, local businesses. They knew me and trusted me, and didn’t need to join a waiting list.’ Lee felt well prepared for self-employment after writing a three-year business plan, setting up a website and preparing a portfolio as part of her West Dean course. She says: ‘After four years of studies, and work experiences and various workshops, I was confident in my abilities and was already working quite autonomously.’

Lee’s teacher at West Dean, maker Shem Mackey, can relate to the challenging employment environment, having graduated in the recession of the early 1990s and started making for himself when he couldn’t find a job. He says strength of character is important in such situations: ‘I think that if graduates who’ve effectively been forced into self-employment can survive the next couple of years, it could be the making of them.’ For UK students and graduates seeking internships and paid placements elsewhere in Europe, Mackey identifies post-Brexit visa and work permit requirements as a complicating factor. But even though some of these young makers may be chasing the same opportunities, Mackey doesn’t perceive a sense of competition between them. ‘They know it’s kind of the luck of the draw who gets a placement,’ he says. ‘There’s a friendship and solidarity – a sense of community, that goes beyond that.’

‘If graduates who’ve effectively been forced into self-employment can survive the next couple of years, it could be the making of them’

Libby Summers, who graduated from the Newark School of Violin Making in 2020, says that no student in her year had a job on leaving college. ‘Most have got something sorted now, but not many have gone into a proper salaried job in a workshop.

It was definitely more challenging in 2020 than in previous years, as people weren’t hiring last summer, and many graduates have gone back to their home countries, whereas they might normally have tried to get jobs in the UK if they could.’ Summers herself opened a shop in Lincolnshire in September 2020, having started a sales and repair business from home in 2019 while she was still studying. She says that as a mother, she couldn’t take up work placements abroad for several weeks at a time: ‘So the only way I could get experience was to set up a business myself.’

Summers had a ready-made contact list, having played in local orchestras and been a violin teacher for 20 years. With repairs and restorations taking over her workload, she hasn’t been able to focus much on making since June 2020, but says, ‘Eventually I’d like to employ someone to handle the repair side of the business, so I can concentrate on selling instruments and new making.’

For new graduates who don’t feel ready to set up on their own and want more experience working alongside established makers, paid opportunities have been scarcer during the pandemic. After spells of work experience in various cities in Europe, one Newark graduate from 2019 is now working for her local council and doing making projects at home on weekends. She found that makers and shops have been more reluctant to offer placements and take on new employees since Covid. ‘Some of the makers I’ve contacted about visiting their workshop or about work experience opportunities have said they don’t want strangers in the workshop because of the infection risk,’ she says. ‘Others have said they might have been able to offer me work experience or even a job trial, but because of Covid, their business is in a more precarious position. I know quite a few Newark graduates from my year who have experienced similar challenges. I will continue to approach makers for work experience opportunities, but I’m not about to give up my full-time job.’

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