We organised international workshop "Innovative use of natural building materials" on 7-18  August. We had 15 participants from 9 countries: Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and England. The project was supported by the life-long learning programme Grundtvig. The project partner was NPO Equilibre.

The first part of the workshop took place in Järvamaa, in Koordi village, where the participants learnt ecological home planning, building bag-basement, wall building of straw, of cob and logs, of cob and wickerwork, building a pizzaoven of clay and plastering with clay. We studied local farm and manor architecture and we visited Information Centre for Sustainable Renovation in Paide.

The other part of the workshop took place in Tallinn, in our Lina street learning centre, where we practiced tadelakt technique, wood restoration, painting with natural paints and traditional blacksmithing. We also showed the works we are doing or have done and visited Estonian Open Air Museum.

Very important was the social side of the workshop - evenings with log fire, introductions about the participating countries, evening hiking and ceremony of Indian sweat tent. All the participants were very different personalities, but with same interests. Thank you for all of you!