Leisure, hustle and career: Informal skills acquisition in accordion repairing

In craft careers, where passion and personal commitment are central, development of skills often crosses the boundary between work and life. Although studies of formal employment and serious leisure both use the concept of ‘career’ to understand progressive development of status and skill, little attention has been paid to integrating these perspectives in analyses of transitions between leisure and work. Building on emerging discussions of craft careers, this article examines skills acquisition in contexts lacking formal certification. Drawing on an ethnographic account of The Accordion Repairer School (TARS), organised by an Italian SME, this article explores how participants navigate leisure and professional goals, revealing diverse motivations and orientations to skills, centred on the accordion as an epistemic object and structured through a community of practice. We identify three groups pursuing accordion repair with different orientations to work and leisure, but all developing a ‘career’: serious leisure performers, sustainable solo business owners and side hustlers. The article argues that communities of practice can simultaneously structure professional and leisure careers, intertwining them in social learning processes that steward knowledge of the focal object, support skills development and recognition, and foster identity formation in craft careers.