Craft is radical, craft is worldchanging, and craft has been with us all along.
How do we know anything about ancient civilizations? Sometimes there is writing, but always there is material: shards of pottery, metal tools and weapons, jewelry made from gold and silver. In a word: craft.
We are defined by our need to use and to make things. We are homo faber, beings who make. To aid in our survival, we have also become traders. On a very basic level, what we make, use, and trade, and how we go about these activities, defines our humanity and shapes our world.
Today there are 6.5+ billion people living on Earth. The economic hegemony governing this massive number of people in the developed and developing worlds is what we’ve come to call “the Walmart economy.� It’s an economy operating on such a vast scale that one one-hundredth of a penny makes the difference between whether a business is profitable or not.
Every one of us on the planet is involved in using, making, and trading. Big corporations make, use, and trade as giant faceless entities with a million tentacles moving as fast as possible and effecting billions of people. Billions of people worldwide are also involved in making, using, and trading craft. (A recent survey published by the Craft Organization Director’s Association measures the U.S. craft industry alone at $14 billion per year.) However compared with big corporations, the craft industry operates on a more individual, intimate, and personal manner, and on a smaller scale.
Craft is radical. In this age of corporate-driven mass-production, the act of an individual making a useful thing is radical. The act of buying a useful thing made by an individual is radical. It is akin to living off the grid: trading outside the big box.
Craft is to shopping what slow food is to restaurants. Buying high-quality things that needn’t be replaced over time but instead may be passed on to future generations is not only old-fashioned, it is also worldchanging. Craft is slow retail, slow consumption.
When dealing with craft, there is an awareness and appreciation for where a thing came from, how it was made, what materials were used in its fashioning, and who labored over it. Through this awareness, a relationship forms between the maker and the user, narrowing the huge gap between the producer and the consumer fostered by our mass-production globalized economy. Putting a face on an object is one way in which craft is, and always has been, worldchanging.
Today, large corporations are starting to show concern for their social and environmental impact and voluntarily implementing changes for the better. Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, for instance, oversees a company that spends more on health insurance for its employees than on coffee. Ray Anderson of the carpet company Interface has become keenly focused on making as small an ecological footprint possible while running a successful business. These business leaders and others like them are tackling environmental and social issues not only to save money, but also to do something to benefit the greater good, even if it doesn’t yield the highest possible profit reports. There is a second bottom line these corporations are starting to value. Their actions have real consequences.
In the same way, the consequences of our collective individual actions are tremendous. Choosing to switch to low-energy light bulbs isn’t just going to save a person money and make them feel good for “doing the right thing.� On the larger scale, we know that if everyone switched to low-energy light bulbs (and more fuel-efficient vehicles, and recycled paper towels, etc.) the reduction of energy use and pollution would be significant. These choices become a force for change.
Ghandi said we must be the change we want to see. I would add that as participants in a market economy, we must also trade in that change: we must make, sell, and buy the change. This is where dollar voting comes in – every dollar you spend is a vote for the product you are buying and the system it supports.
People are literally handmaking alternatives for a bright green future every day. Craft is radical, craft is worldchanging, and craft has been with us all along.
Image: Frank Ridley Makes a Toy. Photo by Amy Shaw.
