Updates from Rosy Greenlees
For the March/April edition Rosy includes news about the success of Craft Matters, Origin and other issues and events surrounding contemporary craft.
Craft Matters at the House of Lords
On 9 March the Crafts Council celebrated the near 6,000 people who have so far signed up to the Craft Matters initiative with an event at the House of Lords hosted by Professor the Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey OBE.
The event launched the website www.craftmatters.org.uk and guests included Linda Barker, Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone, Sir Terence Conran, Siobhan Davies CBE, Sir Nicholas Goodison, Ed Vaizey MP and many established makers including Mary Butcher, Michael Eden, Gerda Flöckinger CBE, Elizabeth Fritsch CBE, Mo Jupp, Danny Lane, Tracey Rowledge, Julian Stair and Clare Twomey.
Read more about the event and speeches here
Craft Matters online
Please do have a look at our new Craft Matters website www.craftmatters.org.uk to see the wonderful range of reasons that people have sent us about why Craft Matters to them. See our interactive map and regularly updated word-cloud which reflects the reasons why people are saying that craft is important to them. If you haven’t signed up already, please take a moment to add your views to theirs – if you are reading this message, you care about craft – so let the world know and help us to Make Craft Count! If you have signed up, please forward the link to your contacts who need to know why Craft Matters!
Visit the website here And download a small selection of the many quotes we have received
Craft Champions
We are delighted that Linda Barker, Sir Terence Conran, Siobhan Davies CBE and Sir John Tusa are amongst the many who have signed up to Craft Matters and agreed to be our Craft Champions for the next year and to help us to raise the profile of contemporary craft still further. We thank them – as we thank everyone who has signed up – you are all champions of craft and we will be in touch with some of you to help us with media interest in your region
Origin
As you know, we have moved Origin in time and space! We are looking forward greatly to the enhanced profile that it will gain from its new home in Spitalfields, its association with the London Design Festival and its new September dates at the heart of the LDF. Whether as exhibitor, collector or craft-loving visitor, we look forward to seeing you there. To find out more about exhibiting at Origin 2010, visit www.originuk.org
Higher Education
I must now turn to less good news – and return to the thorny subject of the current and future status of craft in Higher Education. We will continue to take every opportunity to contribute to the current discussions about the danger to the Arts and Humanities across the board in HE as budgets are cut and STEM subjects prioritised, and of the risks to University museums and galleries as well – including the Craft Study Centre
We have written about this in our responses to Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and the Higher Education Funding Council for England consultations, to the media and continue to raise the matter with stake-holders and colleagues as well as remaining in close contact with the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD)
Our response to an article by Professor Elaine Thomas in the Guardian on the 15 December can be found here
Rosy also wrote a response a Guardian article which raised the issue of cuts to arts and humanities funding. The response and link to the article can be found here
Most recently, I have focussed on the subject in the March/April edition of Crafts Magazine which offered the possibility to explore the issues at greater length.
Policy Briefing
For some recent – and relevant – comments on HE funding from the House of Lords including Lords’ comments on the potential impact on both courses and University Museums, see our Policy Briefing which also includes updates on recently published Conservative and Liberal Democrat plans for the arts, the increasingly bleak view from Local Authorities about their funding prospects.
Stop Press: 18 March 2010: HEFCE funding for 2010/11 announced .
The Crafts Council response is here
Our Policy Briefing is issued monthly. February’s briefing can be found here
To join the e-list for the monthly briefing email e_uprichard@craftscouncil.org.uk with ‘Policy List’ in the subject line.
Out and About
Usually I start this section with events and meetings that have taken place, but this time I want to mention three important events taking place in the next two months first.
We will be co-hosting networking events at Bovey Tracey, with the Devon Guild of Craftsmen (Monday 22 March) and in the Midlands with Craftspace (28 April). At Devon Guild, we will be discussing some of the ways in which the digital environment is impacting on craft – how do we use it to increase the impact of the sector? What are the pros and cons as the definition of the Creative Industries increasingly comes to mean the digital industries?
Our first Craft Rally for makers will be a two-part event in London on 25 March and in Sheffield ON 23 April, in partnership with Artquest and Yorkshire Artspace. The online Craft Rally site is now up and running for makers to shape the content of future Rally events, which will take place across the UK. You can find out more information about Craft Rally here
Turning now to recent events, we launched Possibilities and Losses: transitions in clay, edited by Clare Twomey and published by the Crafts Council in partnership with mima on 23 February, with a thought-provoking and rich discussion of craft today with Clare Twomey and Glenn Adamson. You can see Craft Magazine’s blog on the event here
Our Chair, Joanna Foster CBE and I attended the State of the Arts Conference in January and I attended MMM Arts and the Moral Economy in early March which provided a gloomy critique on our current financial state of affairs and the impact we have on the world’s resources, but a positive vision of how we could live, and indeed, I think, on how the values of craft could contribute to that vision.
I also attended the Cultural Leadership Programme’s debate: Culture & Politics where, broadly speaking, all parties reiterated their positions. Please visit the Cultural Leadership Programme’s website for more information
On a more directly cultural note, it was a pleasure to attend the private view for Goldsmiths Spring Exhibition Silver Waves: Hiroshi Suzuki and to visit Ceramic Art London, where as always there were many visitors and a wide range of work to see. I am pleased that my colleagues were able to attend the Arts Foundation Awards, Department for Children, Schools and Families Conference and National Arts Learning Network Conference and fly the flag for contemporary craft. I also spoke at the UK Glass Forum conference held at the RCA bringing together makers, organisations, higher education and collectors to discuss the challenges facing glass-making today.
Even as I write, I am attending the CHEAD (Council for Higher Education in Art and Design) annual conference in Liverpool and catching up with colleagues in Liverpool and Manchester and looking forward to the launch of Heritage Craft Association Forum at the V&A.
Looking further ahead, I will be attending SOFA in New York during 16-19 April where Crafts Council and UK Trade and Investment will be hosting a reception to promote the British galleries showing at SOFA.
Meetings
I spent a productive day in Edinburgh, visiting Edinburgh School of Art Jewellery and Glass departments, the Meet Your Maker exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland, IC:Innovative Craft and Dovecot amongst meetings. Having previously seen Taking Time in Birmingham, it was interesting to see how two very different venues and contexts shape one’s interpretation of the work .
I also attended the World Craft Council meeting in Northern Ireland where we discussed plans to host a meeting of the WCC Europe members at Collect this year, led by Clare Twomey, vice president of WCC Europe and early thoughts on the WCC Europe General Assembly which will meet in London in 2012.
I attended regular meetings of the Creative Industries Marketing Board, Creative & Cultural Skills and the ERA21 group as well as meetings with The Art Fund, Richard Sennett and attending one of the Arts Council’s consultations on their new strategy. The Crafts Council will of course be responding to the strategy as well as conferring with other ACE funded craft organisations on a joint response for the craft sector.
London Design Consortium
We are delighted to welcome the launch of the LONDON DESIGN CONSORTIUM which will provide a new source of collective support for innovation in design and making for the sector in London. The Consortium brings together the organisations in London which have for many years provided designer makers with the workspaces, training and services that equip them to successfully carry on and expand their creative businesses. The members are Cockpit Arts, Craft Central, Design-Nation, Hidden Art and Metropolitan Works. Information on the Consortium is available from tina.searle@craftcentral.org.uk and dieneke@hiddenart.co.uk
Congratulations
To the Leach Pottery on being selected for the long list for the 2010 Art Fund Prize and to Tony Hall, former Chair of the Creative & Cultural Skills Council and to Sir Michael Bichard, Rector of the University of the Arts, London, both of whom have been appointed as non-party-political peers to the House of Lords.
Read our recent press releases here
