A long journey

My name is Harry Scolding, and I recently competed in the WorldSkills 2024 Lyon competition in joinery for the UK. The whole experience has been absolutely insane. Two years of the highest highs and the lowest lows, battling my way through not only other countries but also my own personal hurdles.

My two-year journey started at Skillbuild, the UK’s regional and national competition where young, ambitious tradespeople compete to be crowned the best in the country. Fortunately for me, I took home a gold medal in 2022. A few months later, I was invited to join the international training program and become part of WorldSkills UK. It was here that I trained for 18 months, spending countless evenings and weekends in my workshop and attending various training events held at colleges across the UK. I was even fortunate enough to train alongside some of my rivals for the world final in China, Switzerland, and Taiwan. This gave me a lot of insight into what I was up against, and believe me, the competition was strong. This motivated me to push myself further as I didn’t want to fall short. In the final weeks of training, I decided to stop working to focus on training full-time. It was here that I feel I developed the most, not only in my technical ability but also mentally. After all the hard work, dedication, and a very challenging week of competing, I was able to stand on the podium at the world final awards ceremony and call myself the 2nd best joiner in the world. I still have no words to describe this moment, and it still feels very surreal to this day.

I’m now working on continuing to grow my business, HDSJoinery, where I’m constantly trying to push myself and my team with bigger and more challenging projects. I’m hoping to stay a part of the training process and be able to pass on my knowledge to other aspiring young people.”