Bloomsbury Craft Economies

Craft Economies provides a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary craft production, situating practices of amateur and professional making within a wider creative economy. Contributors address a diverse range of practices, sites and forms of making in a wide range of regional and national contexts, from floristry to ceramics and from crochet to coding. The volume considers the role of digital practices of making and the impact of the maker's movement as part of larger trends around customisation, on-demand production, and the possibilities of 3D printing and digital manufacturing. Review Susan Luckman and Nicola Thomas have drawn deeply and carefully from the world's well of the contemporary craft economy. Their pluralistic, international approach makes for a complex and counterpointed book of essays. Craft emerges from statistics as a still humanistic practice: hovering with creative intelligence in the body politic of culture and the economy. - --Simon Olding, Director of the Craft Study Centre at the University for the Creative Arts, UKThis collection offers a comprehensive overview of the craft economy as a viable force in opposition to existing systems of production through the humanization of work and commerce. It is critical to examine concepts such as disruptive collaboration, commodity activism and individualized consumption to ensure that highly networked societies of makers will continue to successfully position themselves within a consumer base no longer satisfied with the stuff of mass production. - --Heidi Schwegler, Chair of the MFA in Applied Craft and Design at Oregon College of Art and Craft, USAA rich collection of essays that reveal cultural economies of craft to be subtle, complex and pervasive - craft is a social and material practice that drives the most cutting-edge technology, innovation and design, yet also brings life to people and places, makes human relations, and gives form to imagined futures and worlds. This book shows us that the 'tactile turn' not only has global resonance but many diverse expressions and is a perfect introduction to all those who care about craft, material-making, and the likely prospects for sustainable economies of tomorrow. - --Mark Banks, Director of the CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies, University of Leicester, UK About the Author Susan Luckman is Professor in Cultural Studies at the University of South Australia, Australia. Nicola Thomas is Associate Professor in Cultural Historical Geography at the University of Exeter, UK.