Craft And Our Relationship To The Planet

I’ve been thinking through what I’d like to encompass in this platform, and why I find myself gesturing toward such a broad range of inquiry. Am I sharing a cohesive body of ideas, or creating a flea market of intellectual chaos? Then I read this: ‘Craft skills and knowledge should be at the heart of the debate about our relationship to the planet,’ says sustainability champion Katie Treggiden in a new blog post for the UK’s Craft Council.

And I take a sigh of relief. Aha, I think. Yes. When we peel back the curtain we can see the relationships between these ideas—why a platform about material is not only about objects but also about the climate, not only about art but also about how we choose to live in the world. I’m pasting some of Ms. Treggiden’s post, below, highlighting some parts that resonate especially strongly for me.

“The event [COP26 UN Climate Change Conference] is conspicuous in its homogeneity and in its privileging of those whose business models and profits are put at risk by the very actions needed to avert the climate crisis. Despite the fact that women, people of colour, the populations of the Global South and Indigenous communities around the world are disproportionately affected by and concerned about climate change, the importance of their representation has been overlooked.”

“Critic and curator Glenn Adamson argues that it’s not the case that craft is predominantly practiced by women and non-Western people, but rather that ‘craft’ is the term people apply to whatever they make – that it’s a constructed, ideological category applied to anything outside of the individualistic Eurocentric domain, designed to diminish their power. Historically, craft has been trivialised, along with the worldviews of those who practise it. The perspective that sees craft activity as somehow ‘lesser’ than other creative practices, and the one which regards non-Western contributions on climate emergency as secondary, are both rooted in the same webs of privilege and prejudice.

Craft offers not only a way of making, but also a way of thinking – one that is collaborative, inclusive and responsive to our changing natural environment. It is essential if we are to shift away from our current ‘take-make-waste’ model of production to a more circular one. Traditional forms of knowledge and practice should therefore be at the heart of the debate about our relationship to the planet, and yet the knowledge of craftspeople is often relegated in favour of technological and technocratic solutions and the priorities of global corporations.”