Creativity and craft

We’re getting closer to completing Folksy which is good because we can move on to trying to make it work as a business. It’s going to be a place to buy and sell handmade goods. Not too dissimilar from Etsy, but sufficiently different to make it worthwhile . I’ve got an enormous respect for the people behind Etsy; they do a good job and they seem incredibly passionate.
I’m going to post more over at the Folksy blog about the history to Folksy but wanted to make reference here to the amazing revolution that’s been brought about by people being able to communicate through digital media. Search for “Katamari” [the PS2 game] and “ear muffs” or “woollen prince” and you’ll see what I mean. The internet has allowed people to be creative, to risk failure through taking ideas from different areas, different discourses and meld them together.
I’ve got a presentation I gave a month or so ago on handmade goods and the rise of creativity which I’ll stick up here soon [as soon as my work schedule gives me sight of a stretch of time], which makes reference to craft artifacts as a physical vernacular and perhaps the physical vernacular of the emerging digital world… especially now peak oil and environmental issues are colliding with a desire for personalised goods and a anti-goliath-brand sentimentality. And this visual vernacular is a mutant, cyborg one in which world’s collide. Perhaps I’m getting carried away. Some of it is shit. But most of it isn’t ~ no crochet tablewear here.
And this “melding pot” [see what i did...?] of handmade stuff represented through craftzine, etsy and the many craft blogs is life affirming fabness. I was struck listening to Sir Ken Robinson’s fabulous talk at TED, below, about how much of this craft revolution is a kind of backchannel to learning to be creative. As Sir Ken argues, we are educated out of our creativity, we stop taking risks, we become ‘subjects’ and that subjectification is hard to break down unless you’re exposed to the kind of ideas and challenges that often come through communication with a wider audience and people who ‘do’ and know other things. And that is what is happening now through digital media and communication. It’s also in a way what happened in the days of the early industrial revolution. We had a number of people from different practices [not disciplines yet!] that worked together… that innovated and invented and were able to do so effectively because they were free to experiment across discipline [Isambard Kingdon Brunel for e.g.]. That’s what the image is above refers to. I saw it at a working forge in the Peak District at Easter and the chap saw himself as a creative mechanic, a problem solver, that just happened to use metal and fire to solve problems. Wonderful stuff. Very Fred Dibnah.

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