Our Community
Woodturning is unusually generous as crafts go. Turners share techniques freely, and a lot of what gets made ends up going to someone else.
Chapters and events
AAW and its chapters are here to enrich your overall woodturning know-how, whatever your skill level or area of interest. You’ll be able to discover woodturning and learn new techniques more quickly and more safely with both chapter and AAW memberships. Plus, you’ll have more fun turning. Membership in a local chapter and the AAW offers the “total experience” in woodturning education.
Chapters are independent organizations of local enthusiasts who meet to learn the craft, share techniques, support their communities, and enjoy each other's company. There are hundreds of them worldwide.
If you're already a chapter member, AAW Connects can also help you find chapter demonstrations in areas where you may be travelling. Most chapters love visitors.
The AAW chapter connection
The AAW/chapter partnership is a 40-year tradition of sharing, supporting, and delivering our shared educational mission. Your discovery of woodturning can be maximized with memberships in both the AAW and a local chapter for the “total experience.”
ReTurn to the Community
For more than 15 years, AAW members have been active with the ReTurn to the Community program. Woodturners make a difference through action to support charities and innovative projects. They go beyond monetary donations to realize the full potential of projects to enhance and support the mission of AAW.
Turning for Good (formerly known as Empty Bowls)
Each year, AAW members create and donate bowls and other turned items, which are sold during the AAW International Symposium. These bowls are sold and funds collected by a local nonprofit in the host city to support their community-impact mission focusing on a wood, handcraft, or arts organization to continue to perpetuate art and craft in the local community. Large or small, each bowl costs only $25. One hundred percent of the proceeds benefit the charity chosen by the sponsoring local chapter.
Beads of Courage
Beads of Courage is a national nonprofit organization that provides innovative arts-in-medicine supportive care programs to transform the treatment experience for children coping with serious illness. Through the program, children receive a unique bead to represent each procedure or treatment — a red bead for each blood transfusion, a yellow bead for each night in the hospital, a star bead for surgery, a white bead for chemotherapy. Their collection of beads becomes a tangible record of their journey.
AAW members create and donate woodturned boxes to hold those beads. As organizational capacity and needs vary based on the local hospitals, clinics, and community programs Beads of Courages partners with, please reach out to them directly for more information on donating: https://beadsofcourage.org
Woodturning 101