Craft Communities addresses the social groups, old and new, which have developed around craft production and consumption, exploring the social and cultural impact of contemporary practices of making. Addressing a wide range of crafting practice, from yarnbombs to Shetlands shawls, brassware to paper crafting, in a variety of regional and national contexts, the contributors consider how craft practices operate collectively in the home, communities, businesses, workshops, schools, social enterprises, and online. It further identifies how social media has emerged as a key driver of the 'Third Wave' of craft. From Etsy to Instagram, Twitter to Pinterest, online communities of the handmade are changing the way people buy and sell, make and meet.
Introduction - Craft Communites: Continuity and discontinuity across time and place, Susan Luckman. The commercial entanglements of craft communities 1. Do it yourself, with me: Workshops as a site of interaction between professional and amateur makers, Amy Twigger Holroyd. 2. ‘Out of time and out of money’: How handicraft tourism micro-entrepreneurs in Greece negotiate gender and economic roles in an economic crisis, Fiona Bakas 3. The Pleasures of Feminine Paper Crafting, Kathleen McCollough 4. Commodification, collection and community: Negotiating craft consumption and craft capitalism, Richard Yarwood Craft communities in place 5. Innovation or preservation?: Craft’s post-capitalist identity crisis, Joanna Mann 6. A place-based approach to regional fiber economies, Oona Morrow 7. Walking as sisters: The social dimension of group-based craft production in the Peruvian Andes, Kathrin Forstner 8. Sri Lankan artistic brassware industry: A manifestation of local community values, Sri Rohana Rathnayake and Carl Grodach 9. Recognising craft and creativity as political governance innovation: Activating people and place through civic activism and creative enterprise, Clare Mouat and Bronwyn Adams 10. Make, do and mend: A patchwork economy of UK crafting for health, Sarah Desmarais Activist craft communities 11. Better together: Co-creating living heritage, community assets and enterprise, Fiona Hackney, Deirdre Figueiredo and Mary Loveday 12. Material girls: The intangible and tangible of women’s weaving groups in Australia, Kirsten McGavin and Hannah Swee 13. Crafting employment for marginalized women: The remaking of social enterprise, Mia Hunt 14. The craft of reuse: Making communities at charity secondhand shops, Melisa Duque and Aneta Podkalicka 15. Crafting asylum: Text, textiles and asylum seekers in detention, Margaret Mayhew Craft communities online 16. Disposition and taste: DIY craft's star system, cultural intermediaries and the influence of Etsy, Jacqueline Wallace 17. New geographies of domesticity: Work, space and community in the virtual arts and crafts, Shannon Black, Chloe Fox Miller and Deborah Leslie 18. Media practices and social arrangements on DaWanda: Reflections on the appropriation of a social commerce platform, Dagmar Hoffmann and Wolfgang Reißmann List of Figures List of Contributors
Nicola Thomas is Associate Professor in Cultural Historical Geography at the University of Exeter, UK. Susan Luckman is Professor in Cultural Studies at the University of South Australia, Australia.
Reviews for Craft Communities
Craft Communities brings together an exciting and international array of writers whose ideas and examples are of central importance for thinking about craft as a collective, generative experience. The themes and chapters provide much-needed explorations and insights to help readers think through and unravel some of the complexities of decolonising craft. * Professor Juliette MacDonald, Director of Faculty at Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland * Craft Communities gathers in one publication is a breadth of particular case studies that reveal the dynamism, but also the sheer complexity, of craft’s place in contemporary community building. * Jessica Hemmings. University of Gothenburg, Professor of Craft, Sweden *
