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Crafts CouncilAboutResearch and policyPolicy brief

January 2022

January 2022

All the latest news and research from the craft sector


  • Craft policy
  • Craft research
  • Craft education
  • Craft and wellbeing

In a new year round-up, we’re pleased to bring you:

  • PhD student Nicola Dillon’s blog on craft, materials and race
  • Studies from the British Council, the Creative PEC and Stand.earth Research Group on sustainability
  • National and local inquiries into the role of culture in place and levelling up – Crafts Council will be giving evidence
  • New reports on how to overcome barriers to creative participation
  • A campaign and research in support of creative university courses
  • New studies and resources on measuring culture and knowledge exchange
  • Shadow Cabinet changes.

Crease Lightning, Perfectly Mindful Origami - The Art and Craft of Geometric Origami

Conversations on craft, materials and race

Nicola Dillon blogs here about her PhD which focuses on cultural diversity and UK craft. The research draws on Black ecological thought and approaches from design and material anthropology. Nicola explores how craft is intertwined with colonialism and capitalism. She attempts to bridge important conversations on craft, materials and race, by bringing questions on materials into conversation with questions about Blackness through acts of making.

Based at Kingston University, in partnership with Crafts Council, Nicola will soon be inviting makers who identify as Black African Diaspora to work with her and others to further explore their material relationships and how modes of working with might be a way to move towards a craft otherwise.

Nicola can be contacted at nicola.dillon@kingston.ac.uk

Working towards a sustainable future

The British Council and the Creative PEC have launched a global agenda for the cultural and creative industries, as a contribution to the United Nations 2021 International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development. Key actions for governments include policy to support creative entrepreneurship and innovation; creative careers, freelancers, and informal livelihoods; and the cultural and creative industries and environmental sustainability.

Stand.earth Research Group shines a light on the impact of some of the world’s biggest fashion brands on deforestation in the Amazon.

Inquiries into the role of culture in place and levelling up

The Government’s DCMS Committee is holding an inquiry into Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda. It will look at how can culture reanimate our public spaces and shopping streets. The Crafts Council will be submitting evidence, based on The Power of Experiences - Bringing Craft Experiences to your Business, our new film and guide.

The Local Government Association are holding a Levelling Up Local Inquiry. Crafts Council will give evidence to the strand on place and local cultural capital.

The Northern Culture All Party Parliamentary Group’s (APPG) Inquiry, The Case for Culture, presents evidence that ‘northern culture has a critical role to play in achieving economic growth and upskilling ambitions for the UK as whole’.

Arts Council England reports on the steps that are important in place-based programmes to develop places and engage communities, including longer timeframes and strong partnerships.

Overcoming barriers to creative participation

Highlighting the barriers preventing disabled artists from accessing the international cultural sector, British Council’s Reflecting on Change explores the achievements and learning from its global disability arts programme.

Time to Act, by mobility information network On the Move for Europe Beyond Access, reveals how a continued lack of knowledge in the European cultural sector creates barriers for disabled artists and audiences.

The APPG for Creative Diversity report, Creative Majority, sets out what can be learned from other sectors to transform the creative labour forces of the future. It shows that change is required at every level of creative businesses, funding and commissioning plans.

The International Arts + Mind Lab’s NeuroArts Blueprint: Advancing the Science of the Arts, Health, and Wellbeing is an action plan that brings together science, the arts, and technology to help people prevent, manage and recover from physical and mental health challenges.

The themes in Jerwood Arts’ Live Performance Artists’ Experiences of Covid-19 will also resonate for makers and visual artists. They include demands for more inclusive opportunities, better pay and working conditions, and support to improve their work/life balance.

Cultural Freelancers Wales / Llawryddion Celfyddydol Cymru Road to Recovery? report explores how freelancers fared during the pandemic. It makes recommendations to change organisational governance, invest in cultural freelancers and rebalancing systems, and improve funding and accountability.

From spring 2022, Ireland will pilot a ‘basic income’ plan for artists. Declan Long reflects on whether such plans can keep cultural workers afloat in ArtReview.

Supporting creative university courses

Universities UK have launched the MadeAtUni: Creative Sparks, a campaign to showcase creative talent and encourage the Government to support creative university degrees, and a framework to support universities in England to identify courses where value or quality might be a problem and act on it. These follow a poll showing that more than 70% of respondents were proud of the UK creative industries and nearly 60% felt creative university courses deserve more government funding after the challenges they've faced during the pandemic. At the same time, a new Office for Students consultation sets thresholds for graduate employment that universities and colleges will have to pass.

UNESCO’s International Commission on the Future of Education has published Reimagining our futures together: a new social contract for education highlighting the importance of the arts in education. It opens a conversation about how to forge a new social contract for education in the context of the climate emergency and Covid pandemic.

‘Education in the arts – music, drama, dance, design, visual arts, literature, poetry and more – can greatly expand students’ capacities to master complex skills and can support social and emotional learning across the curriculum.‘

New studies on arts and culture

A scoping study funded by AHRC and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will explore ways of measuring the value of the UK’s cultural and heritage assets. Currently market-based measures of value fail to fully capture the contribution of the culture and heritage sector to UK society.

Arup and Therme Group explore what the next decade looks like for arts and culture globally in Future of Arts & Culture: Drivers And Impacts For The Next Decade. They conclude that arts and culture is increasingly profit-driven, commercially measured, and focused on experiences. Arts and culture are also taking a more active role in supporting social innovation, inclusion and diversity.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has published a new set of bulletins on the contribution of sectors including the ‘creative industries’ and ‘culture’ to the economy. These include craft but the data are not broken down to show the partial estimates craft DCMS produces for craft (see our report Measuring the Craft Economy for more on this).

The UK and US research councils are funding twelve projects in museums and galleries which will develop new approaches to collections-based research methods and pioneer digital innovations for cultural collections.

The National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange (NCACE) have launched an Evidence Repository, that includes academic literature as well as reports, toolkits and blogs of over 150 open-access evidence sources on knowledge exchange and collaborations between Higher Education and the arts and culture sectors

Shadow Cabinet changes

In changes to the Shadow Cabinet, Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central is the new Shadow Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, taking over from Jo Stevens MP. Bridget Phillipson is the new Shadow Secretary for Education. She took over from Kate Green MP. Jonathan Reynolds is the Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Industrial Strategy and takes over from Ed Miliband MP.


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