Publish: --- > [!NOTE]+ Meta > Author:: [[Kevin Murray]] > Date:: 2024 > WeftLinks:: [[The Value of Craft Project]] #### Craft and the polycrisis Humanity is challenged on many fronts. What the World Economic Forum (2023) has termed “the polycrisis” takes three main forms. Our spectacular growth as a species is reaching planetary limits and threatening dangerous climate change. Despite our need to work together to this environmental challenge, the world is becoming more polarised with conflict increasing between and within nations. Meanwhile, technology challenges our human capacities, leaving us distracted by glowing screens and supplanted by algorithms. Things are getting “out of hand”. Craft can help us deal with this “polycrisis”. We know this from the thousands of stories and studies published in academic and public media about the value of craft. It is important now that we synthesise this information, in its breadth, in order to appreciate the critical role it plays in our world today.   #### Background The Value of Craft Report was first proposed in 2018 at a board meeting of the World Crafts Council - Asia Pacific in Kathmandu, under the Presidency of Dr Ghada Hijjawi-Qaddumi. Work began in earnest during the COVID pandemic in 2021, which facilitated global collaboration via video platforms.  The Knowledge House for Craft, a global association of craft thinkers and makers, hosted a "Knowledge Weaving Laboratory" where a group of experts gathered fortnightly to create a structure that could contain this information. We used the weaving loom as our model: identifying references as the vertical warp and common themes connecting them as the horizontal weft.  This process led to the identification of fifteen values of craft, which can be broken down to 53 claims. The values reflect the different domains of life, which are clustered in the practical, symbolic and ethical areas, symbolised in this report by the hand, head and heart.  Each claim is linked to references that provide evidence.  #### The definition of craft The concept of craft used in this report reflects Glenn Adamson’s simple definition in The Invention of Craft (2013), "Making something well through hand skill". This definition incorporates craft as both a noun and a verb: both the handmade object and the process of making. The key element is the hand. This is the primary agent for the direct manipulation of materials. It is how we developed the tools at the beginning of our collective story, both as a species and our origins as individual beings who developed through childhood play.  #### A living report While this publication is a snapshot of our knowledge about the value of craft, its information base will continue to evolve as more references and claims are added to reflect a changing world. This report offers a framework for future research. Claims that are less well supported by references can be prioritised for further study.  Each value is represented in this report with a brief outline of its dimension. The claims linked to this value are then outlined with a sample reference. One case study is offered as a concrete example, but this is the tip of the iceberg. Readers are encouraged to explore each value further by reference to the “living report” available in the knowledge base, which will continue to be updated into the future. The Value of Craft Report 1.0 forms the basis for further research, which will include updating references, addressing counter-claims, identifying claims for further research and fostering projects that help meet the recommendations.  #### How to be human In representing the full breadth of value, craft constitutes not only the production of beautiful objects but also a sensibility that is important to the gamut of life. While the Western focus on individual studio crafts is significant in itself, craft in the wider world has important value as a way of connecting people together by providing a positive sense of collective identity. The key message of this report is that craft helps us "be human". This craft voice first emerged with the birth of the modern world. The Industrial Revolution heralded machines that surpassed humans in their speed and efficiency of production. In England, this prompted the Arts & Crafts Movement as a renewed appreciation of the intrinsic value of making things by hand. This became a worldwide movement, led particularly by Eastern leaders, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Soetsu Yanagi.  Now we face a similar existential challenge: artificial intelligence. When we first realised that machines could make things better than humans, we could at least presume that creativity remained a uniquely human capacity. Not so any more. Today, Large Language Models like ChatGPT can produce original text and images at the click of a button. AI is now replacing call centres, tutors, therapists and even friends. Where does it stop? It stops at craft. This report reveals an increased demand by ordinary people to experience craft in their lives. Workers who spend their day in front of screens take pottery classes at night to reconnect with the physical world and others. The stories referenced in this report show the power of craft to provide a sense of agency. This includes those rendered homeless by disaster or displacement, patients recovering from injury, giving voice to injustice and those seeking meaning in their otherwise harried lives.   Despite the extension of technology into more areas of our lives, we still depend on craft skills. This is evident in health, such as the dexterity of a surgeon and the maker of bespoke prosthetics. Even in science, building models by hand can help understand complex phenomena such as the double helix. As we saw with the revival of sewing to meet the initial demand for masks during the COVID pandemic, craft skills provide critical emergency backup when the inevitable crisis hits. #### Humanist renaissance The challenge of AI offers new opportunities for craft. As part of the growing experience economy, craft helps us reconnect with ourselves, others and the world. This is immediately obvious with the growth in popularity of craft classes. But other possibilities open up. The role of "thinker-maker" draws on the new generation of university-educated craftspersons who can share what working with materials has taught them about living a good life. Through this generation, we hear the voices of makers directly in publications, videos, social media and podcasts.  Previously abstract skills will be now seen as crafts. Writing by hand at a keyboard is now an “artisanal” activity in contrast with artificially generated text. We will appreciate text tapped out by a human with a similar trust as we do holding a handmade cup. The domain of craft expands with the growth of technology. In this way, craft can play a part in what is heralded as a “coming humanist renaissance” (LaFrance, 2023). This renewal involves an evolution of homo faber (man the maker) to include what the philosopher Joel Reynolds (2022) calls homo curare (man the carer). Craft puts the world back in our hands, helping us care for the environment, each other, ourselves and the precious traditions we have inherited from our ancestors.  Care is intrinsic to making by hand. Skilled craftspersons are sensitive to the varied affordances of their material of specialisation, such as the grain of timber or the elasticity of clay. The patient understanding of materials teaches us how to collaborate with other people, care for the marginalised, and work within natural limits: craft teaches us how to be human.  The world's craftspersons are custodians of our human story. The craft story begins 3.3 million years ago when tools were first knapped out of stone. It continues today with the technological capacity to connect anywhere in the world any time. While technology has extraordinary capacity, craft helps us to think about its ultimate purpose. As well as achieving more power, we also need to sustain meaning and care for each other.  Craft embodies what it is to be human, encompassing our hand, head and heart.   [[Kevin Murray]], coordinating editor #### References This is why “polycrisis” is a useful way of looking at the world right now. (2023). [World Economic Forum](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/polycrisis-adam-tooze-historian-explains/). [[Glenn Adamson]] (2013). *The Invention of Craft*. London: Bloomsbury Academic. LaFrance, A. (2023). [The coming humanist renaissance](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/07/generative-ai-human-culture-philosophy/674165/). *The Atlantic*. Reynolds, Joel Michael (2022). Health and Other Reveries: Homo Curare, Homo Faber, and the Realization of Care. In Talia Welch & Susan Bredlau (eds.), *Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty*. SUNY Press. pp. 203-224.**