Capital of craft: Cobbler Darren Bischoff and the handmade revival

THE COVID-19 pandemic fuelled a revival in the hand-made, as people sought creative projects to do in lockdown, and as the reality of a world in crisis made us question our ability to be self-sufficient.

Artisan cobbler Darren Bischoff describes it as "community coming back to itself" - and in the inner west, a national hotspot of creativity already, businesses that were focused on building community around artisanal pursuits were well-placed to ride the new wave.

Take Bischoff's Leichhardt School of Footwear, where he passes on skills that are on the brink of being lost to Australia forever. Or the Skein Sisters at Dulwich Hill who keep a growing army of knitters in beautiful yarn. Or Bobbin and Ink at Petersham, which teaches sewing and screen-printing to all-comers, from hobbyists through to budding professionals.

They told us their stories here:

Darren Bischoff remembers the inner west of his 1960s and '70s childhood as a dirty, rough, pit of a place. His family home in Annandale was near a rubber manufacturer, and he grew up with the stench of it in his nostrils.

"I got the hell out of here when I was 18 and swore I was never coming back," he says.

In 2000, however, a broken relationship brought him from the eastern suburbs back to his family home "with my tail between my legs, thinking it was for just a month or two to get over myself, and I am still here.

"It had changed, to the new inner west, where there was a lot of artistic professionals, writers, designers, and actors, people that were creative and I thought, this is cool."

By then, Bischoff - who used to doodle shoes around the edges of his primary school books - was a passionate cobbler with terrible timing.

While the fortunes of the inner west had been on the rise during his absence, those of Australia's footwear industry had been heading in the opposite direction. Just as Bischoff had returned from London in the late 1980s and signed up with Sydney Technical College's professional shoemaking course, the impact of tariff cuts on imported footwear was hitting local manufacturers hard: an industry that had employed 40,000 people was on its way out.

"The minute I started, the industry was just disappearing behind me. I didn't take it too seriously; I didn't realise it was the beginning of the end and that it was going to fall away quite the way it did," he says.

"As I was going through the courses, they were deleting them from the curriculum; I did a four-year trade certificate and was part of the last group to go through."

Bischoff nonetheless found plenty of commissions as a bespoke cobbler. His 'real' job may have been hairdressing - and he still works one day a week at the salon he co-owns in Stanmore - but the likes of Morrisey Edmiston, Wayne Cooper and the Zimmerman sisters ("I did all their first little sandals for their swimmers, back in the 1980s") had him make shoes for their catwalk shows and for sale in their shops. He worked closely with the editors of Vogue, Elle and Harper's Bazaar to create custom pieces for their fashion shoots, and with the theatre, film and opera industries to make costume and period pieces for their performers.

All the way through, Bischoff maintained strong connections with the shoemaking school and fought unsuccessfully against its closure, which ultimately came in 2009.

"When our proposal didn't work to save the school, I opened up here."

"Here" is the site of the former Riviera Coffee Lounge on Parramatta Road, and more than 10 years later, there is a waiting list for his classes. Students enrol in one of four curriculums devised by Bischoff - sandal, shoe, sneaker and boot - and learn techniques such as pattern cutting, stitching, lasting and soling.

Post lockdowns, his classes are all back up and running and "full of eager shoemakers".

The school looks as much museum as workshop with its vintage machinery and collections of colourful shoe lasts, heel moulds and shoe-making tools. While classes are held on weekends, Wednesdays are co-op days, when members converge to work on their shoe-making projects, and prospective students can come along and take stock.

Bischoff laments the demise of Australia's footwear industry, an absence which he says has been brought into sharp focus by the pandemic's interruption of supply chains.

His school can do only so much - but it's significant nonetheless: "We are not going to do the manufacturing, but we can keep the art, the history and the skill of shoemaking alive in Australia," he says.

Two friends with a shared love of yarn and knitting got together to open Skein Sisters in Dulwich Hill in 2017, bringing a world of beautiful hand-dyed yarn into the heart of the inner west.

There was no question Janine Smith and Deb McDonald would situate their business anywhere else but the inner west, where they both live. "We know what the people are like," says McDonald. "They are particularly creative and crafty; they were our people."

They found a 19th-century building on New Canterbury Road that had been a tool shop and, at some point before that, a bait and tackle concern. It was in a state of disrepair and the two got to work.

"It was perfect because it was old, we had to do a lot of work to it, but it has a beautiful character which is what we were looking for to create that community of knitters that we were pretty sure was out there," says McDonald.

"We wanted somewhere where people who shared our passion and shared our love of these crafts could meet."

They hit the mark. In the first few years, the friends hosted regular champagne nights with guest speakers - "that was so much fun" - and held social knit nights, including a monthly one for men-only.

When COVID landed, they shut up shop and sent their employees home - but were calling them back 24 hours later to deal with an unexpected and unprecedented deluge of phone and online orders for yarn and accessories. People were making plans for lockdown ... and they included knitting and crochet.

"We had everything from people who were already knitting and crocheting and wanting to make sure they had enough yarn for all the projects they wanted to do in lockdown, to people who have gone back to crafting after years and years of not doing it, and lots of people who have always wanted to learn, and decided to tick it off their bucket list," says Smith. "We had to create a page on our website which was just info for beginners."

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Their biggest challenge during the COVID years was being able to source stock - as well as Australia their indie-dyed yarns come from across the world including North and South America, Canada, Europe and New Zealand - and then get it into the country.

Says McDonald: "We grew so much we had to actually use our classroom as a stock room, so we don't have anywhere at the moment where we can hold classes and we are really sad about that.

"Our focus is to be able to get back to being able to host all those sorts of events, and have people come and take classes again."

There's a lot going on at the snappily named Bobbin and Ink on Parramatta Road, Petersham.

It describes itself as Sydney's only sewing and screen-printing workshop dedicated to helping people professionally sew and print. But many go there just for fun, too.

As well as classes for kids and adults of varying skill levels, Bobbin and Ink has clubs that give people ongoing access to the equipment they need for their projects.

It also has a shopfront and online store selling sewing machines, inks, threads, patterns, kits and more besides. "We have hundreds of products in the store now," says owner Laura Walsh. "It is something we slowly added to over the whole nine years."

A professional screen-printer herself with a focus on garment decoration, Walsh says that nearly a decade into the business, "we are probably a bit louder about sewing these days".

The beginner sewing courses are the most popular, says Walsh. Particularly since COVID, there has been an uptick in people wanting to learn how to make a specific item in order to set up a business. "A lot of people are trying to work from home a bit more, or maybe have a side-hustle or a back-up," Walsh says.

"We are like a stepping stone between full-on higher-education study, and maybe just a little hobby. We do have a lot of people who just do it for fun, but we want to teach the skill level that impresses people when they see it."

Some are starting early. Children as young as eight have signed up for sewing classes, and the progress of a contingent of high-school-aged kids is proving fascinating to witness.

"The classes are fun to watch because a couple of these kids have been coming for a few years now," Walsh says. "They make things for their parents - one girl made a skirt for her mum to wear to work, and three of them are doing corsets at the moment. We have a new tutor who works at Opera Australia as her main job, so costume has become a more interesting thing for them."

Building community has always been the workshop's aim, says Walsh, with classes firmly at its core - and they are now back in full swing post-lockdown (masks compulsory) after Walsh and her team of expert tutors chose not to conduct classes online.

"The idea of online classes doesn't excite me personally in terms of what I want to do with my life," Walsh says. "It is probably a stupid position on some level, but for us it is quality, not quantity - we purposely have smaller classes."

One of the prettiest creative spaces the inner west ever did see, the Happenstore in Annandale, is closing on June 4, leaving some very sad makers behind. Its owner, esteemed textiles designer Cath Derksema, said the sale of her rented Parramatta Road premises to a developer had contributed to her decision to move on.

For the past six years Happenstore, lockdowns notwithstanding, has been a textiles studio cum handmade art and craft store cum gathering place for amateur crafties. They would come together twice a week to do their own small projects - making blankets, repairing clothes, knitting, painting - surrounded by the exquisite work of professionals, many of them inner west artists and makers such as Reiko Azuma, Skye Rogers and Angie Goto.

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"A place to come, to make, to learn and to become inspired; an authentic and unique destination to celebrate artistry and friendship," was Derksema's description of her enterprise, which also hosted workshops teaching a range of creative endeavours.

It was inside a former guitar shop transformed by Derksema and her husband who chipped brown paint of the walls to reveal stunning original brickwork beneath.

Derksema says it's possible the Happenstore may eventually pop up elsewhere in the inner west, and says people can keep an eye on her Instagram, @thehappenstore, to see what happens next.

In the meantime, the community she created will be moving on too.

"They are very sad, but what has happened is all these beautiful friendships have been made and they can all stay together and find other places to meet and make, which has been a beautiful conclusion to it all."

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