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Crafts CouncilInsight and advocacyPolicy briefings

February 2023


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

February 2023

  • Challenging racism in craft – an update on our research, plus new approaches in the creative sector
  • A major review of job quality with some mixed evidence about the craft sector
  • New writing making the case for creative education and the arts premium, plus Ofsted’s review of Art and Design
  • Plus, advocacy for the creative industries in the Budget, how art can shape policy and whether the changes at DCMS will help.


Brooch, Faye Hall

Challenging racism in craft

Update on Crafts Council’s study on the cultural value of craft

We’ve already introduced you to our 10-month Living Lab project exploring the cultural value attached to craft with partners Glasgow Caledonian University London. Funded by the Centre for Cultural Value’s Collaborate Fund, we are exploring, developing and testing measures of the cultural value and wellbeing attached to craft by racial majority/minority communities who are excluded from the cultural space of craft. To address racism in craft we need research that identifies and recognises the value of the knowledge, experience and cultural heritage of makers of colour in professional, community or other crafts spaces.

We’re hosting two Living Lab workshops, testing these measures with groups of people participating in a craft activity. Our first was in partnership with Oitij-Jo Collective who run craft workshops with women and young people based in east London, engaging with people to explore aspects of the British-Bangla narrative. The event was structured around an indigo dyeing workshop as you can see in the pictures below.


  • Credit: Farihah Chowdhury

  • Credit: Farihah Chowdhury

  • Credit: Farihah Chowdhury

The research topics in our project address a wide range of topics relating to craft and race, for example:

  • Migration
  • Cultural heritage and cultural exchange
  • Participation in individual craft activities
  • Participation in community craft activities
  • Inter-generational craft learning
  • Participation in UK craft sector
  • Discrimination and race
  • Cultural appreciation/appropriation/reappropriation of craft
  • Societal value of craft
  • Creativity as expressed through making
  • Personal wellbeing in relation to craft.

We’ll be holding our second Living Lab next month in Birmingham and we’ll post more updates then.

Our funders, the Centre for Cultural Value, have written about their everyday creativity research digest that summarises evidence relating to the creative and cultural activities that people do at home or in their communities. It explores the value of activities facilitated by amateur or voluntary groups in shared community spaces and self-initiated activity that takes place at home.

A new approach to tackling racism and inequity in the visual arts sector is set out in the AREVA report. CVAN London in collaboration with iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) set out and recommend a long-term, anti-racist development scheme to be adopted by arts institutions.

Meanwhile, Rosy Greenlees and Suzie Leighton have been reflecting in Arts Professional on the challenges of research collaboration and knowledge exchange between the arts and higher education sectors.

Job quality in craft and the creative industries

The Creative PEC has published a major review of job quality in the creative industries, which includes evidence on fair pay, flexible working, paid overtime and employee representation. Findings about craft show:

  • Participation in job-related training in craft is the lowest of 30 sectors across the economy including construction, finance and hospitality (Figure 3.7).
  • Self-employment is high in craft (39% of workers) compared to other creative industries (15% across the whole economy) (p8) and craft has the highest number of disabled workers compared to the economy as a whole (Figure 3.5).
  • All creative subsectors except for museums, galleries and libraries fall short of the whole economy average, with management practices particularly weak in craft, design, screen and publishing (p44).

Source: The Creative PEC

The Crafts Council’s submission to the review is quoted (p56):

“Better recognition and support for creative education and training in the face of course closures and a significant decline in numbers taking Design & Technology exams at school [are obstacles]. The latter is obscured by DfE stats which focus on the (slight) increases in Art & Design take up. Teacher training, CPD and money for equipment and maintenance are all reducing, together with perverse incentives arising from the Ebacc focus on English, Maths and Science. These are contributing to a decline in teaching the 3D skills essential to the future of the creative industries.” Crafts Council submission to the Call for Evidence

General findings include:

  • Creative sector work has many positives including opportunities for creative expression, greater autonomy and more flexible working.
  • There is higher job satisfaction amongst creative industry workers than for the economy as a whole.
  • But pay in some parts of the creative workforce is low and hours are long.

Making the case for creative education and the arts premium in education

Young people’s views on creativity in STEM (Science, Technology Engineering and Maths) subjects are set out in a report from the British Science Association. It calls for the forthcoming Cultural Education Plan to include plans for integrating STEM and arts subject teaching. Findings include that:

  • Young people are most passionate about using knowledge to overcome the climate emergency, the cost of living crisis, and challenges with young people’s mental health.
  • While 80% of young people believe creativity is vital to overcoming these major societal challenges, they also have a limited understanding of how STEM and creativity can work together as part of overcoming these problems.
  • Young people want to see more integration between STEM and arts subjects. At present, they feel that the education system makes them choose between being “creative” or “technically minded”.

Caroline Norbury of Creative UK makes the case for creative subjects to be included in STEM. In a recent article in the New Statesman she urges the Government to introduce the arts premium promised in the Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto.

The disparity in access to arts education between the private and state sector is detailed in an editorial in The Guardian. It emphasises how participation in the arts has fallen in state schools in the last decade, with policies such as EBacc, Progress 8 and austerity lying at the root of the problem. It also calls on the government to deliver on its promise of an arts premium as part of creating the labour supply of creative and arts professionals that the country’s growing creative industries require.

Ahead of the Spring Budget on 15 March Creative UK (the support organisation for creative people and business) have made a submission to the Treasury. The focus is on the achievements and potential of the creative industries and the case for tax reliefs and delivering the £270 million Arts Premium promised in the Conservative Party Manifesto.

A new campaign is calling on the government to protect arts and technology subjects in English secondary schools. Jointly run by the Independent Society of Musicians and the Edge Foundation, #SaveOurSubjects has been launched in response to the drop in entries for arts subjects and a decline in funding for music, arts and cultural programmes in schools.

And Ofsted has published a subject review of Art and Design that explores factors that contribute to a high-quality art education. It states that high-quality education consists of pupils being taught ‘a full range of subjects for as long as possible’ and notes how ‘primary teachers lack the skills, training and experience to teach a high-quality art curriculum’.

Influencing arts and creative policy

MANIFEST is a new initiative to evaluate the role of art in policy making. It describes how artists can work with policymakers to make policy creation more accessible. The pilot project from Policy Lab is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

There are changes at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Rt Hon Lucy Frazer KC MP is now the Secretary of State for DCMS. Frazer has been MP for South Cambridgeshire since 2015. She was formerly a levelling up minister and has had no previous role in culture. DCMS has now lost responsibility for digital to a new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology which former DCMS Secretary of State Michelle Donelan now leads.

It remains to be seen if this change will make it more difficult for government to champion innovation in the creative industries and craft.


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