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Explore recommended reading from our friends at London Craft Week.
For some time now, the act of making has been widely advocated as a tool for supporting mindfulness. This has reached a new level of significance and meaning in recent times. We asked London Craft Week to share reading recommendations that explore how craft can positively contribute to building a sense of community and support mental wellbeing.
This period of lockdown has been a time of great reflection; a time to reassess our priorities and the way in which we engage with and acknowledge them. While physically we have been required to remain apart, the dominant and prevailing message has been about togetherness.
It’s been uplifting to see people reconnecting with their own creativity, which continually brings like-minded people together. During this time, individuals across Britain and the world have adopted home-crafts via an assortment of online workshops and tutorials, ‘how to’ guides, patterns and kits. And it’s not hard to understand why; making something brings us joy, it offers a sense of purpose and achievement and can be a means of connecting with others.
Community and Wellbeing
Trend forecaster Li Edelkoort has been forthcoming in her predictions for how we will approach materials both during the pandemic and beyond. In her conversation with Imran Amed for Business of Fashion, Edelkoort highlights how in times of crisis we crave tactility, through textiles such as knitwear. Our exposure to the outside world has recently been radically reduced, and many have been without physical contact. As such, the sensory experience of handcrafted objects holds even greater value during these times of uncertainty.
The scale of the pandemic has left many people – particularly those who are not already frontline workers – feeling helpless. Perhaps that’s why so many have found solace and empowerment in creating home-made PPE or simply immersing themselves in the act of making.
In an interview with Roz Chast, the New Yorker cartoonist, she shares how her passion for crafts keeps her hands moving and helps quiet her anxiety. It’s a theory that is supported by clinical psychologists too, who verify that making can help calm us and alleviate the symptoms of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.
It’s not just about keeping busy though; identity building, personal expression, social capital and political intent all play a role in why people are drawn to make, what they make and the context in which they make. In her piece for the FT’s How to Spend It, Marianna Giusti takes a look at the artist-makers using embroidery for record keeping and journaling, as well the global communities, such as Tiny Pricks, who have adopted it as a medium for social commentary and political messaging.
In her book ‘Craft’, design historian Tanya Harrod brings together a series of lost and overlooked texts that illuminate our understanding of contemporary making practices and delve further into this idea of Craft activism, or ‘craftivism, in which craft has been employed strategically for political purposes, including addressing critical issues surrounding gender and global development.
CREATE DAY
The team behind London Craft Week are launching a new global initiative, Create Day: a celebratory event sharing and showcasing twenty-four hours of non-stop human ingenuity, imagination, diversity and skills from around the globe, starring a line-up of gifted artists-makers-designers and other creators. From household names to experts next door, these Creative Heroes will open up their studios, factories, workshops, kitchens, homes, colleges, construction sites and community spaces, giving us a glimpse behind-the-scenes.