Na Píobairí Uilleann

Chairman, NPU

An Píobaire

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8 4 12 20120927 12 Fennell T HE FIRST HALF OF 2012 has seen great ad- vances in the provision of training in NPU’s PIPECRAFT Training Centre with a further 46 participants attending part-time courses and the establishment of the ultimate goal of the Full time training course and 10 trainees receiving funding from various County Leader Development agencies signed up for the 3 year programme. We have had a total of 9 part-time courses which have varied in length from 1 day work- shops to 1 week long courses and also a re-run of the 6 Week “Introduction to Pipe Making”. We had a very successful bag and bellows mak- ing course in February delivered by Paddy O’Hare and Jim Wenham very kindly made himself available again for another workshop on bellows making in March. The first introductory class in pipe-making from last November was complemented by an intensive reamer-making course in February with Bill Haneman and, as expected, it was fully subscribed to by some of the participants of the November course, so a second reamer- making course was delivered in March by Mick Dooley which was also well supported. In among those week long courses we also had a workshop in pipe maintenance skills, deliv- ered by Eamonn Curran, and we also com- pleted a basic machine skills foundation course, “Workshop Health and Safety and Basics in Ray O’Toole Engineering Machining” which ran for 2 weeks in April. Of course the major goal of establishing the full time course in pipe-making was finally realised with the Leader funded trainees able to start the long process of training. The first term of the 3 year programme was completed by the end of June with extensive coverage on the foundation skills necessary for the successful production of a chanter. Unlike the six week course which aims to deliver the knowledge and skills to pro- duce a chanter in a condensed format, the full- time trainees had the advantage of a full programme and began with in-depth assess- ment, measurement and planning and from this they engaged in the manufacture of all the nec- essary tooling required for pipe making before NPU Chairman and CEO Dave Hegarty and Gay McK- eon with Jimmy Deenihan, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht at the opening of PipeCraft

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[Periodical]

2012-09-21T00:00:00

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