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Craft and the Creative Economy examines the place of craft and making in the contemporary cultural economy, with a distinctive focus on the ways in which this creative sector is growing exponentially as a result of online shopfronts and home-based micro-enterprise, 'mumpreneurialism' and downshifting, and renewed demand for the handmade.
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.
This book presents research on pathways into creative work. The promise of ‘doing what you love’ continues to attract new entrants to the cultural and creative industries. Is that promise betrayed by the realities of pathways into creative work, or does a creative identification offer new personal and professional possibilities in the precarious contexts of contemporary work and employment? Two decades into the 21st century, aspiring creative workers undertake training and higher education courses in increasing numbers. Some attempt to convert personal enthusiasms and amateur activities into income-earning careers. To manage the uncertainties of self-employment, workers may utilise skill...
Drawing upon field work and interviews with cultural workers in the UK and Australia, this book examines the cultural work experiences of rural, regional and remotely located creative practitioners, and how this sits within local economies and communities.
This open access book explores the experience of working as a craftsperson or designer maker in the contemporary creative economy. The authors utilise evidence from the only major empirical study to explore the skills required and the challenges facing contemporary makers in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Drawing upon 180 interviews with peak organisations, established and emerging makers, and four years of fieldwork across Australia, this book offers a unique insight into the motivations informing those who seek to make an income from their craft or designer maker practice, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing them as they do so at this time of renewed interest internationally in the artisanal and handmade. Offering a rich and deep collection of real-life experiences, this book is aimed both at an academic and practitioner audience.
Craft practice has experienced a sharp rise in popularity since the late 2000s, partly through the ‘aura of the analogue’ and the desire for authentic, handmade products in an increasingly fast paced, digitalised world (Luckman, 2015) but also because of digital platforms such as Etsy and social media enabling ‘anyone’ to become a craft entrepreneur. This book brings together historical, policy and individual narratives to inform a broad understanding of craft entrepreneurship. Drawing on case studies from around the world, Craft Entrepreneurship considers questions of identity, community, and the digital in craft entrepreneurship. In doing so, it finds craft activities to be positio...
This critical, international and interdisciplinary edited collection investigates the new normal of work and employment, presenting research on the experience of the workers themselves. The collection explores the formation of contemporary worker subjects, and the privilege or disadvantage in play around gender, class, age and national location within the global workforce. Organised around the three areas of: creative working, digital working lives, and transitions and transformations, its fifteen chapters examine in detail the emerging norms of work and work activities in a range of occupations and locations. It also investigates the coping strategies adopted by workers to manage novel difficulties and life circumstances, and their understandings of the possibilities, trajectories, mobilities, identities and potential rewards of their work situations. This book will appeal to a wide range of audiences, including students and academics of the sociology of work and labor history, and those interested in understanding the implications of the ‘new normal’ of work and employment.
Craft Economies provides a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary craft production, situating practices of amateur and professional making within a wider creative economy. Contributors address a diverse range of practices, sites and forms of making in a wide range of regional and national contexts, from floristry to ceramics and from crochet to coding. The volume considers the role of digital practices of making and the impact of the maker's movement as part of larger trends around customisation, on-demand production, and the possibilities of 3D printing and digital manufacturing.
This book represents the voices of scholars, fashion designers, bloggers and artists, who speak to the pervasive nature of fashion in matters of politics, history, economics, sociology, religion, culture, art and identity. Dialogically open, the volume offers a broad apprehension of visual matter in the global contemporary context with fashion at its core, exploring its metamorphosing, media-oriented and ‘disordered’ modes of being in the early twenty-first century. The book’s contributors consider topics of universal import stemming from the realm of fashion, its dissemination and impact, from institutional, corporate, collective and individual perspectives, reflecting on the morphing, interchanging and revolutionary quality of the visual realm as the basis for continued research in fashion studies. Contributors are Shari Tamar Akal, Jess Berry, Naomi Braithwaite, Claire Eldred, Sarah Heaton, Hilde Heim, Demetra Kolakis, Sarah Mole, Lynn S. Neal, Laura Petican, Cecilia Winterhalter, Manrutt Wongkaew.
In recent years research into creative labour and cultural work has usually addressed the politics of production in these fields, but the sociotechnical and aesthetic dimensions of collaborative creative work have been somewhat overlooked. This book aims to address this gap. Through case studies that range from TV showrunning to independent publishing, from the film industry to social media platforms such as Tumblr and Wattpad, this collection develops a critical understanding of the integral role collaboration plays in contemporary media and culture. It draws attention to diverse kinds of creative collaboration afforded via the intermediation of digital platforms and networked publics. It c...