MEDIA RELEASE
20 May 2013

Unique Ukulele Building Workshop On Offer In Wellington

Wellington, New Zealand

Local guitar and ukulele making business GOLDBEARD GUITARS has teamed up with the Wellington High School CEC (Community Education Centre) to offer a unique one week workshop in ukulele making this winter (14 – 20 July).

A rare opportunity to learn more about one of New Zealand’s favourite instruments, the workshop is designed to suit anyone game enough to give it a go. With woodworking and safety skills taught on-site students will be taken through the instrument-making process step-by-step, leading to the production of their own hand-made ukulele to take home with them at the end.

“Ukuleles are a lot of fun and I’m chuffed to be able to share the art of building them with other people,” says Dave Gilberd, GOLDBEARD GUITAR’S ‘Head Tinkerer’. “I still remember the first instrument I made… it was quite a life changer.”

An aircraft engineer by trade and musician by heart, Dave’s instrument-making career first kicked off after he, himself, attended a short course in guitar-making in 2003. “Immediately after I strung up that first guitar I knew this was the life for me,” he says. After years of tinkering with musical instruments and an intense course of related study in the UK, he established GOLDBEARD GUITARS – a now two-year-old guitar and ukulele making and repair company based in Owhiro Bay, Wellington.

“Dave’s a classic example of the many students who experience significant learning through a short course offered by organisations like us,” says CEC Director Robyn Hambleton. “You never really know where learning will take you, but you can guarantee it will be in a positive direction.”

While the undoubted highlight for students on this workshop will be the first strum on their new ukuleles, they’ll be led through a series of achievements along the way – from learning how to work from a technical plan to hand-crafting small wooden components, bending sides, assembling parts and professional finishing. Bragging rights, of course, come as an added bonus – and are well deserved, for as Dave says: “Music is a gift, but creating a music-maker is something else.”

ENDS

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