Labour Party Policy Review
Crafts Council response.
Talent, aspiration & growth: Is Britain missing out?
The Crafts Council responded to the Labour Party Creative Industries Policy Review, which aims to identify the range of factors required to sustain the UK’s competitive advantage in the Creative Industries and examine what the industry needs to innovate and thrive.
Introduction:
The Crafts Council welcomes the opportunity to contribute evidence to Labour Policy Review on the Creative Industries. Our response is supported by research conducted in the period 2009 – 2011 and our comments are specific to the craft sector.
1) How digital technology is changing business models and blurring the boundaries between production, distribution and consumption?
Recent research from the Crafts Council, Making Value, shows that the specific skills, knowledge and creative methodologies associated with craft have far-reaching application. It appears that post-industrial manufacturing and digital content production are no exception.
A passion for working with materials and processes is fundamental to craft. Makers are quick to explore, transform and create new materials and processes, and the Crafts Council’s briefing note Craft and the Digital shows how makers are harnessing digital tools ranging from rapid prototyping and Quick Response (QR) codes to Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) and augmented reality.
Working Methods:
Post-industrial manufacturing technologies have been adopted as craft tools by a new generation of progressive makers, supported by digital workshops such as Metropolitan Works and FabLabs. Rapid prototyping, in particular, now offers seemingly unlimited opportunities for the creative and conceptual exploration of materials and form.
For example, recent research from the Crafts Council profiled ceramicist Cj O’Neill’s work with the Chesterfield company Control Water Jet which led this company to pierce curved ceramic surfaces for the first time, not only extending the conceptual scope for her own work, but at the same time creating a new and marketable service for the company.
Business models:
Post-industrial manufacturing technologies can play a role in enabling makers to grow their businesses: with relatively low set-up costs, it is more possible for makers to produce components in larger volumes – and with higher profit margins – by laser cutter than it is by hand.
This is a strategy that works well for makers such as Melanie Tomlinson – also profiled in our recent research – a metalsmith making boxes and brooches alongside her collectible, hand painted works. Having her metal jewellery blanks cut to size, in small volumes, by Birmingham engineering supplier Precision Micro has helped Melanie to build a business with multiple revenue streams and a solid foundation for growth. As 3D printers become increasingly affordable, this trend towards hybrid manufactured and hand making – enabled by digital technology – can be expected to grow amongst professional and amateur makers alike.
Production and consumption:
Makers are also using digital technologies to reshape the systems enabling craft production and consumption. The Handmade’s Digital event at the FutureEverything conference in May 2011 suggested that:
A new maker community is emerging, connecting the culture of traditional skills and materials with modern-day digital production, distribution and interaction techniques.
Connected with DIY culture and the environmental movement, this community works to empower consumers through direct involvement in the design and making process. Through blogs, websites and online tutorials, it transforms consumers into co-designers of consumer textiles (Melanie Bowles, exhibiting at FutureEverything) and knitting machine hackers (Becky Stern). Boundaries between amateur and professional practice are blurred, as Open Source technologies encourage input from all. For example, Fab@Home, a self-build, desktop 3D printer has become the focus of one Open Source community.
Makers are often as involved in developing new digital systems for making and selling craft, as they are in producing new objects – or digital content – themselves.
Etsy.com, set up by a group of New York makers to sell their own work now boasts annual transactions worth £193m, and is just one example. New and increasingly sophisticated online retail mechanisms are being pioneered by companies including Holition, founded by jeweller Lynne Murray, which enables customers to ‘try on’ jewellery and luxury apparel online. London-based Holition’s clients include brand managers at BMW and IBM, as well as jewellers Tacori and Hannah Martin.
Enhancing craft and the digital:
The Crafts Council is increasingly working to support makers and audiences in engaging with digital technologies. Having developed strong social media platforms for makers (Craft Rally) and craft educators (Craft Action Network), the Crafts Council is currently developing a range of digital initiatives and piloting new resources. Our recent work includes a smartphone app; the groundbreaking Lab Craft which is currently touring, and our ongoing programme of online exhibitions recent acquisitions to the Crafts Council Collection reflecting new developments in the digital field, and in January 2011 we provided data to the first Culture Hack, bringing cultural organisations together with software developers and creative technologists to make interesting new projects and explore possibilities for making information more widely accessible.
2) How to articulate the value of arts and culture?
Value of Craft:
The craft sector and craft practice have signification social value and make important economic contributions. The specific value of craft can be articulated and understood in terms of its potential in educational settings and contribution to social inclusion. The craft sector is also part of a vibrant creative industries sector and makes a small yet significant, direct contribution to the UK economy.
Educational:
Craft practice encourages creative thinking and innovative learning; research shows that developing haptic skills aids cognitive development (Benefits to the Learner of 21st Century Craft, Nicholas Houghton, 2005 London: Crafts Council). Craft skills also provide children with a firmer grasp of the 3-D world, allowing them to gain an understanding of materials and processes and to make informed judgments about abstract concepts. Craft learning contributes to learners’ sense of personal agency as well as creating links between home and school.
In schools, engagement with materials and the development of associated skills can also engender important cross-curricular learning benefits that feed into a number of other disciplines, including STEM subjects. In the case of science for example, observing the effect of firing processes and glazes on clay can assist understandings of chemical changes in everyday situations. These cross-curricular learning opportunities are one of the key principles and benefits of the Crafts Council’s programme Firing-Up, which is a replicable, scalable national programme that aims to reinvigorate ceramics teaching across the country working with Higher Education Institutes, their technicians, tutors and pupils.
Social:
Looking beyond the classroom, craft can facilitate the inclusion of hard-to-reach learners. For example, in the British Ceramics Biennial, the Graffiti*d project, profiled in recent Crafts Council research, saw a group of 13-16 year old boys working with ceramicist Cj O’Neill to develop public graffiti pieces. The boys, who were excluded from school, used the graffiti to transform ceramic plates into installations which commented on the closure of the Ainsley Pottery in Stoke-on-Trent. In the process, they gained a voice on local issues within their community through media coverage, whilst developing pride in their work and enthusiasm for work opportunities in the creative industries.
The Graffiti*d project is just one example of craft’s well-being potential which is examined in Craft and Wellbeing, a recent briefing note from the Crafts Council. The briefing argues that developing craft skills can build the confidence that strengthens social interaction and ultimately well-being and cites research which suggests that social connectedness is perhaps the single most important factor in distinguishing happy people from those who are merely ‘getting by.’
Finally, the enormous popularity of craft is evidenced in the Taking Part research, which showed that 18 per cent of the UK adult population took part in a craft activity in 2009/10. (Taking Part: England’s Survey of Culture, Leisure and Sport, an ongoing survey originally commissioned by DCMS/ACE/SE/MLA in 2005).
Economic:
The craft sector makes important contributions to the economy, with the whole craft sector generating £3bn each year, and is part of a vibrant cultural and creative sector in the UK, which contributed 5.6% of the UK’s GVA in 2008 (source DCMS). Largely made up of self-employed makers and owners of SMEs, the contemporary sector employs nearly 35,000 people, and in 2009/10 was growing more rapidly by employment than any other creative sector.
Investing in craft also has significant spill-over effects, and the skills and materials knowledge developed through craft practice feed into a range of subjects and professions in other creative industries and beyond. The recent Crafts Council report Making Value: Craft and the economic and social contribution of makers shows craft makers contributing to sectors from film and fashion to health and architecture and partnering manufacturers in new commercial products.
3) Access to business and employment opportunities within the Creative Industries?
Professional craft practice requires advanced technical, practical and artistic skills as well as business acumen. Craft businesses are typically sole/micro-enterprises and craft makers are resourceful and pragmatic, commonly relying on multiple income streams, for example combining teaching, consultancy and making, in ‘portfolio careers’.
Recent research from the Crafts Council Crafting Futures, commissioned as part of the wider Creative Graduates, Creative Futures survey found that craft graduates are flexible and entrepreneurial, and showed craft makers to be lifelong learners, prepared to invest in their own professional development.
However, access to work experience in the sector remains a challenge, particularly for recent graduates, and further integration of business and entrepreneurial skills to match artistic skills is needed in creative and cultural courses at all levels. Support for Continuing Professional Development is also extremely valuable for craft makers’ skills and business development.
Craft Graduates:
The Crafts Council’s Crafting Futures research found that craft graduates are adept at working independently in the landscape of micro-businesses and freelance work that characterises the craft sector. Findings also showed that in the early years of their careers more than one in three craft makers have worked freelance and one in five run a business, with double this proportion aiming to run a business as their careers progress. And craft graduates were also found to be exceptionally socially mobile with a high percentage stating that they were the first family member to enter HE and with no difference in their success after graduation compared to those from more privileged backgrounds.
However, in common with other creative industries, the work experience market in the craft sector is very competitive and opportunities are found informally. Our research indicated that work experience contacts established at university and word of mouth are essential career facilitators. Finding work after graduation was shown to be one of the main challenges facing craft graduates, with only half feeling prepared for the world of work on leaving their courses.
Apprenticeships:
Apprenticeships are one possible model for formalized work experience in the craft sector; although apprenticeships typically work well in sectors with a preponderance of large-employers and less well in sectors comprising smaller organisations. The current apprenticeship model therefore needs to be more flexible to take into account the structures of different sectors, including the craft sector.
Continuing Professional Development:
The Crafts Council’s Crafting Futures research found that craft makers are lifelong learners and are prepared to invest in their own development. At the time of the Crafts Council’s Crafting Futures survey 38 per cent of participants were engaged in further study or some form CPD, often combined with paid work. And almost three-quarters of crafts graduates had undertaken some form of informal or formal study since graduating.
Our research found that CPD is important for makers to keep up to date with new digital technologies and industry software; learn new practice skills, business knowledge and promote their work; and provides opportunities to network and collaborate with like‐minded individuals. Our research also found that short courses were the preferred model for CPD.
Many makers also come to craft as a second career through FE and other routes. Training that helps craft makers at all stages of their careers understand the market and recognise the diverse contexts/collaborations in which their skills can be applied is particularly valuable, as it can assist makers in developing different income streams and sustaining their practices.
The Crafts Council has a strong track record in this area and we work with hundreds of professional makers every year. Our Professional Development Programme, Collective, which is a portfolio of five continuing professional development programmes, helps craft makers to develop their work and business skills throughout their careers.
4) How to stimulate growth and support the cultural and creative economy?
The craft sector is part of a vibrant creative industries sector which contributes almost as much as the financial services to the UK economy according to some sources. As above craft businesses make a small yet significant, direct contribution to the UK economy, and until recently the sector has been growing more rapidly by employment than any other creative sector.
Cultural industries typically operate on mixed funding models and the contemporary craft sector is a complex mixed economy, with many makers combining income-generating work in their own businesses with projects funded by the public and voluntary sector. Public funding plays an important role in the craft sector operating as seed-funding and providing leverage for securing private funds.
Craft teaching throughout the education system also plays a vital role in developing a pipeline to the sector and ultimately to unlocking its economic and social potential.
The Role of Public Sector Funding:
Public investment commonly supports the developmental and research aspects of the craft sector which in turn stimulates the growth and commercial end. Public funding also acts as seed-funding and recent cuts in public funding for culture, and associated potential declines in philanthropic giving through loss of leverage, will reinforce the need for funding for the sector.
Crafts Council Making Value research shows that for the majority of makers, investment in their own development had been matched by interventions from arts/ creative industries support agencies, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and generic business support services, which had enabled business start-up and/ or catalysed growth. In particular:
• Short, focused courses, run either by specialist creative business support agencies or by Business Link, had equipped makers with the basic information they needed to start up in business and to consider new directions (such as export) in business strategy.
• Mentoring at mid-career stage had often lead to the ‘eureka moments’ which unlocked creative and business potential, enabling makers to identify their unique capabilities and skills, or to find ways of applying these in new ways. Many mid-career makers described having become ‘stuck’, perhaps over-committed to too many different elements of a portfolio career, lacking time or investment to innovate and develop new work, and/ or unable to find new markets. In all cases, mentoring or other forms of Continuing Professional Development had clarified business aims and objectives, and set the maker on course for further business growth and creative development.
• Brokering and knowledge transfer programmes had connected makers with industry partners, leading to new products, services and innovations for both partners. In particular, knowledge transfer partnerships between Higher Education Institutions, local industrial companies had enabled makers to increase their scales of production and local companies to develop new competencies, marketable to other clients.
Our considered view is that specific, timely and appropriate forms of Continuing Professional Development (CPD), developed and funded by the public sector, are crucial to business and creative growth within micro-enterprises without large available assets or working capital. Such businesses are prevalent, not only within contemporary craft but also across the arts and heritage sectors.
Without public sector investment, potential businesses and social enterprises are – in many cases – unlikely to reach start-up, and, where they do, they are unlikely to reach the scales of production, quality of innovation, reach of market or impact on communities or economies of which we know they are capable.
Craft in Education:
Promoting the value of craft to the learner in schools contributes towards the development of the next generation of makers and audiences for craft as well as those who become designers, architects and artists by encouraging the development of craft knowledge in young people and the recognition that craft is a viable, entrepreneurial career.
The Crafts Council welcomes the recent political endorsement of practical learning and the increasing recognition of the vital social and economic contribution of practical skills, including craft. However, we are concerned that recent initiatives in school age education including the framework of the National Curriculum Review, the introduction of the E-Bac, recommendations in the Wolf Review and declining numbers of arts teacher training places in 2011/12, signal a renewed emphasis on a core of academic subjects and threaten the provision of practical and cultural education in schools.
Policy makers must play a role in addressing hierarchical distinctions between a core of academic subjects and cultural subjects, acknowledging the important cross-curricular benefits of cultural subjects, including craft, and restoring practical learning opportunities in schools. It is important that craft is seen not only as a practical subject but one which is a hybrid of practical and intellectual skills, best summed up as “intelligent making”.
The role public funding for craft in Higher Education:
Public sector funding for teaching and research of craft in HEIs plays a particularly significant role in the sector, with the majority of craft makers being graduates of honours degree courses, and with HEIs undertaking cutting-edge research which leads the sector in terms of innovation. This teaching and research enables the development of materials knowledge and craft practice to continue and serves to unlock the economic and social potential of the sector.
Recent funding changes in HE have resulted in public investment supporting ‘priority subjects’ that are costly to teach but offer social returns. Medicine, engineering and science are singled out as specific examples of the type of course that government funds should support. These changes send a powerful message to students and universities about the relative value of arts and humanities subjects and fail to recognise the important cross-fertilization between STEM and cultural subjects and the significant contribution, including economic, made by these sectors. We argue that public funding also has a vital role to play in providing support at HE level for other subjects which have economic and social impacts, including craft.
In 2010 the Crafts Council undertook research comparing undergraduate craft courses listed on the UCAS database for 2009-10 and 2010-11. Encouragingly, there was evidence of an increase in the number of craft courses overall, particularly through the growth of interdisciplinary courses offering craft specialisms alongside other subjects. However, the analysis also showed that over 30 craft courses closed between 2009/10 and 2010/11. Discipline-specific craft courses – with their need for space and equipment and relatively small student numbers – have become even more vulnerable following recent HE funding decisions, endangering the availability of courses enabling in-depth study and also threatening the growth of the popular interdisciplinary subjects described above with their reliance on specialist teaching and equipment.
And while the Crafts Council has long argued for more diversity of routes into the professional craft sector, and we can appreciate the economic attractiveness of concentrating resources in fewer institutions (reserving judgement on whether this is the best service to the student or professional craft sector), we are very concerned about the potential consequences of these changes. We will not retrieve knowledge lost in the coming years – it will vanish forever.
