IN PRAISE OF UK CRAFTS PEOPLE

Hi everyone

My mid-week post is normally a catch-up about what has been happening in Christmas Pie Crafts since the last time I put fingers to keyboard, but this time it is different.  My favourite craft magazine, Popular Crafts, has this week launched an initiative to promote and support UK Crafters - the initiative is called LOVE UK CRAFTERS and you can read about it via this link.

The aim of LOVE UK CRAFTERS is to support and promote the wonderful handmade work that is not only part of this country's heritage, but also part of its future; a major part, as UK consumers are looking more and more for quality products and in particular quality handmade products that are made in the UK.  The majority of handmade items are made by small one-person companies - that one person has skills that they have inherited, improved, adapted, learnt and used to create the beautiful items that we all see at fairs, open days and craft events and in various online stores.  A good example of the work made in the UK can be seen in the fantastic range of items that are displayed every week in the Handmade Monday blogging event.

What better time to promote and be proud of our work than during the year we are hosting the Olympics and celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee - not only a  good year to promote our work to everyone in the UK, but to everyone who will be visiting our shores over the next few months.  Good things come in threes, so we must be the third good thing this year.

The Crafts Council have a very interesting report on their website called Consuming Craft: the contemporary craft market in a changing economy.  It is a lengthy, but very interesting, report and of particular interest was the fact that 40% of adults in England (16.9 million people) have purchased a craft object and a further 23% (9.6 million people) would consider buying a craft object.  Combined, these indicate a total market for handmade craft of 63% of all adults in England.  So who are we looking to for sales?  The 40% who do buy (clearly they know how good our work is) or the 23% who might buy?  Or should we be looking at the 37% of people who neither buy nor consider buying handmade?

With the support of the LOVE UK CRAFTERS initiative handmade artists can support others as well as promote their work.  Katherine Jewitt, the Editor of Popular Crafts is producing a list of ways we can help each other and ourselves to a very successful handmade 2012 and one quick and easy way of doing something now is to send Katherine a pic of a piece of your work along with a description of no more than 140 characters  - check here for full details.

Enjoy the rest of the week everyone - I hope that if it snows where you are, that it doesn't lie around for too long.

Jill