>[!INFO] >This is one of the [[Practical values]] of craft >Editor: [[Liliana Morais]] The decline of community and trust in others is widespread, particularly in the developed world ([Evans](https://www.ggd.world/p/whats-driving-the-global-decline), 2024). Craft provides a way of people working together productively and instils a mindfulness to others and the wider world.   Craft’s social value concerns building community and its resilience through the strengthening of relationships of trust, solidarity, and interdependence (including interdependence between people, and between people, materials, places and environment), making it a potential driver of social change. ### Key Claims %% DATAVIEW_PUBLISHER: start ```dataview list summary from #claim AND [[Social value of craft]] ``` %% - [[Weft/Claims/Claim - Craft is a collective activity that forges trust and belonging.md|Claim - Craft is a collective activity that forges trust and belonging]]: Craft helps us connect with other people. When done collectively, it can be a sociable activity that fosters meaningful relationships involving trust and interdependence, which adds to our well-being and a sense of connectedness. - [[Weft/Claims/Claim - Craft plays an important role in prisons.md|Claim - Craft plays an important role in prisons]]: Craft activity can play a useful role in rehabilitation of prisoners. It provides a sense of achievement and contribution to the outside world. - [[Weft/Claims/Claim - Craft promotes local development.md|Claim - Craft promotes local development]]: As an alternative to industrial production, craft favours the use of local materials and distribution to local markets. This offers more enduring employment, community involvement and local pride. In the bigger picture, this encourages autonomy and diversity. - [[Weft/Claims/Claim - Working with materials helps us appreciate the needs of other people.md|Claim - Working with materials helps us appreciate the needs of other people]]: Making objects by hand with materials demands sensitivity and patience. Makers need to be especially alert to the variability of organic materials, such as the grain of wood,  the plasticity of clay and the breaking point of fibre. Such sensitivity carries over to how we deal with other people. It fosters the patience necessary to understand the other person’s perspective and feelings. %% DATAVIEW_PUBLISHER: end %% ### Extra claims #### Craft involves social learning and creates a sense of shared identity Craft involves learning from and about others, adding to create a sense of belonging to communities and social groups. Learning a craft also teaches us important social skills. Formal apprenticeships and craft guilds have traditionally been important sites of socialisation. Anthropologists Lave and Wenger (1991) have argued that craft learning involves the creation of communities of practice, that is, people who share a common interest and deepen their knowledge through frequent interaction. Through this process of sharing knowledge and established practices, they can form a common identity and sense of belonging. According to [Kankaro](https://lainepublishing.com/blogs/journal/knitters-united-building-connections-through-crafting) (2021), “learning from others’ experiences accelerates our own learning as supportive social groups enable communication, mutual learning, and discovery.” Bunn (2014) also claims that craft making promotes different kinds of learning through cooperation, intergenerational relations, and knowledge sharing. This includes not only the learning of skills, but also learning about history and culture, learning about other people’s tastes and lifestyles and, importantly, learning about materials and their environments.  Furthermore, social learning happens not only through interactions between humans through intrafamilial (e.g., mother-daughter) and intergenerational exchanges (e.g., master-apprentice), but also through engagements with materials and objects. A project involving making replicas of a collection of artefacts by Ainu indigenous peoples of Japan held at Hokkaido University showed that, in the process of engaging with the objects through the various senses, craftspeople were able way to connect not only with lost techniques, local materials, and their own skills and cultural background, but also with the souls of their ancestors and with future generations (Yamasaki & Miller, 2019).  This shows the role of craft not only in building relationships between people, but also in restoring relationships to one’s cultural identity and heritage, highlighting the power of communication of objects. This is particularly relevant for communities in which the line of transmission of craft skills and other types of traditional knowledge has been broken by colonisation and assimilationist policies ([[Cherokee Craftspeople Are Stronger Together]]).  #### Craft promotes community resilience Besides contributing to the creation of communities of practice, craft can add to community resilience, particularly in regions suffering from the breakdown of communal ties resulting from outmigration, population ageing, and population decline. According to [Teasley](https://www.japanhouselondon.uk/whats-on/design-regional-resilience-in-japan-talk-by-professor-sarah-teasley/) (2022), spaces where people come together for learning, making, and sharing ultimately serve to support community resilience and sustainability. Wehr (2001) claims that making practices that involve people coming together to assist each other adds to the strengthening of social ties, thus contributing to the creation of both virtual and place-based communities. Gauntlet (2018) also argues that virtual, digital, and place-based spaces for making and sharing can help foster community and add to social capital, that is, social networks based on shared values and trust. Finally, gift-giving of handicrafts can also add to the maintenance and strengthening of community relations ([Kankaro](https://lainepublishing.com/blogs/journal/knitters-united-building-connections-through-crafting), 2021).  ### Craft contributes to social change By offering opportunities for people to be expressive and creative with each other, making together can create thriving communities of people who are engaged with the world around them. For Gauntlet (2014: 233), this can help people to “recognize that they can make and shape their own worlds, and do not merely have to consume stuff made by others” and potentially contribute to social change. ### Case-study: Community-making and resilience through crafts in post-disaster Fukushima, Japan Image source: Watalis website. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, local women in Watari town, Miyagi prefecture, one of the most affected areas, started setting up a variety of voluntary organisations. One of these organisations, Watalis, aimed at creating opportunities for social interaction and exchange in the disaster-stricken areas, holding a total of 473 handicraft workshops and events since it was set up in 2012. Elderly people in the local community who participate have shared their thoughts about the positive impacts of the project: "It is an opportunity to go out", "I have made friends with people who like crafts", "I am very happy because I couldn't afford to take lessons when I was young", and "I look forward to drinking tea together while looking at each other's works" ([Watalis website](https://watalis.jimdofree.com/)) In 2016, a community café was opened in a building that used to be the office of a gas station from the 1960s. The Atelier & Kissa Nakamachi Cafe functions as a space for people (both locals and visitors) to get together to drink and talk in the midst of trying to rebuild their lives and their community after the disaster. Besides holding handicraft workshops, the cafe also serves handmade confectionery developed together with people with disabilities using agricultural products grown on abandoned farmland ([Watalis website](https://watalis.jimdofree.com/)). Another project involves the making of gift bags called fuguro, handmade by local women with used kimono cloth. According to the website, "selling culture as a commodity is a good way to communicate information on the local gift exchange culture and to pass sewing skills on to the next generation" ([Edahiro](https://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_id034795.html), 2014, translated from Japanese). The bags are now sold at department stores across the country as a way to support reconstruction of disaster-hit areas. About 40 people, most of whom are in their 30s and 40s, work on the making of fuguro from home. ### References Bunn, S. (2014). Making Plants and Growing Baskets. In Making and Growing Anthropological Studies of Organisms and Artefacts, edited by Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam. Surrey: Ashgate. Gauntlet, D. (2014) Making is Connecting: The social power of creativity, from craft and knitting to digital everything (second expanded edition). Medford: Polity Press. Finlay, L. (1993). Groupwork in occupational therapy. New York: Springer.  Jepson, A. (2014). Gardening and Wellbeing: A View from the Ground. n Making and Growing Anthropological Studies of Organisms and Artefacts, edited by Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam. Surrey: Ashgate. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wehr, K. (2013). DIY: The Search for Control and Self-Reliance in the 21st Century. London and New York: Routledge. Yamasaki, K; Miller, M. (2017) Ainu Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: Replication, Remembering, Recovery. In New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics, edited by A. Minh Nguyen. Lanham: Lexington Books.