September 2021

First off – next steps following the Making Changes in Craft report. As well as the Cabinet reshuffle this month, we’ve new evidence for you about how Covid-19 is affecting arts and culture, reports on what’s changing in the cultural economy, analysis of arts exam entries, new narratives to classify the Crafts Council’s collections, plus lots more.

Making Changes in Craft – what now?

Following the launch of the Making Changes in Craft report, we’re pleased to be a partner in phase 2 of Dr Karen Patel’s study. Karen describes in her blog how it will focus on craft social enterprises and community groups around the UK and in Australia and how they foster inclusive spaces to make and bring people together. The Crafts Council is responding to this work by actively working with the emerging Global Majority Branch steering group to identify new opportunities to tackle representation and the Craft UK network is developing a Toolkit for Change that draws together resource, support and action the craft sector can take to be part of this positive step change.

Cabinet reshuffle

The September Cabinet reshuffle gives us Nadine Dorries as Culture Secretary at Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). Dorries has been MP for Mid Bedfordshire since 2005 and replaces Oliver Dowden. Previously she was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care with responsibility for mental health, suicide prevention and patient safety.

Julia Lopez, MP for Hornchurch and Upminster since 2017, is now Minister of State at DCMS. She replaces Caroline Dinenage who was a strong supporter of craft. Lopez was on the Parliamentary International Trade Select Committee then Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office from 2020. Lopez is Secretary to the All-Party Group on Disabilities.

We have written to congratulate new ministers and to introduce them to the craft sector.

How is Covid 19 affecting arts and culture?

An Attitude is Everything survey shows the importance of ensuring arts venues avoid
lax COVID rules.

Curating for Change: Disabled People Leading in Museums explores the current landscape of museum engagement for D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people. Almost all participants thought that the Covid pandemic had presented a positive opportunity in terms of flexible remote working, interview practices and digital engagement for audiences.

Women, Work & Covid-19 is a new project using crochet to help visualise the pandemic’s effect on Hispanic women’s employment, who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

The Creative Civic Change project found arts activities helped neighbours feel more connected to their area and each other, boosted mental health, and encouraged creativity among many who don’t consider themselves artists. They also sustained and developed creative careers through lockdown, with local practitioners growing in confidence to manage projects, fundraise and deliver digitally.

Younger audiences participated in culture more online than older audiences during the pandemic and are more interested in digital experiences in the future. But digital engagement prompted by the pandemic did not increase cultural consumption overall. 43% of respondents to an Audience Agency survey said they’d participated in cultural activities online during the pandemic, an increase of just 3% from before.

The same research programme found that those audiences under the age of 25 reported the most serious impact from the pandemic on their wellbeing.

Boundless Creativity, the Arts and Humanities Research Council research project, has examined the role of innovation in shaping cultural experiences during the pandemic and generated a new evidence base to inform the recovery, renewal and future growth of the UK’s cultural and creative sectors.

Arts and creative industries workers are among the most likely still to be on the furlough scheme (15% of the industry), according to HMRC figures for July.

BOP’s new report for UNESCO shows how the cultural and creative industries have fared consistently worse than national economies overall in response to Covid, megacities and other major urban centres. Yet the Creative UK Group projects that the creative industries can create 300,000 new jobs and add £132.1 billion to the economy by 2025.

What’s changing in the cultural economy?

New research from the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC) explores how changes in local government spending on culture have played out unevenly across England. Local cultural provision is being restructured and repurposed towards new ends.

People from privileged backgrounds still dominate roles in the arts and creative industries according to a PEC report exploring social mobility in the creative economy. This report doesn’t include craft but an earlier 2020 PEC report showed persistent class imbalances across all the creative industries except in craft. Getting in and getting on: Class, participation and job quality in the UK Creative Industries found that about one-third of the craft sector is working class compared to 28% who are more privileged. People from working class origins comprise about a third of the UK's population, but just 16% of the creative industries' overall workforce.

Creative Majority, from the All Party Parliamentary Group for Creative Diversity, reports on the business case for what works to support, encourage and improve equity, diversity and inclusion in the creative sector. Recommendations build on the five As: ambition, allyship, accessibility, adaptability and accountability.

The Fashion Economy report looks at how well the industry is tackling change in response to Black Lives Matter and to sustainability challenges.

A High Street Renaissance found that almost 70% of people think cultural spaces make their local area a better place to live. Culture and creativity plays a role in attracting footfall to the high street, generating spend and creating civic pride.

The Mayor of London is investing nearly £3m to increase the number of Creative Enterprise Zones to support artists, creative businesses and local people by creating long-term affordable workspace, business support and skills development.

A new study from University College London finds the benefits of community cultural engagement are greater in England’s most deprived areas.

Mind the Understanding Gap: the Value of Creative Freelancers sets out how the varied workforce of creative freelancers contributes significantly to our economies, communities and culture. It proposes improvements in government support for self-employment and freelancing and a system of adult skills, lifelong learning designed to support individual contributions to the economy and appropriate and relevant business support and infrastructures.

A PEC Discussion Paper by the same authors considers how to recognise, embrace and supporting freelancers in a changing labour market; enact good freelancer employment and procurement charters; and the role of place-based policy and creative freelancers.

The Design Council’s Design Economy 2021 is a live research three-year programme that will share new data, evidence, stories and toolkits as a growing resource for policy makers, business leaders, public sector professionals, architects and designers.

Further falls in arts exam entries in school

The Cultural Learning Alliance’s analysis shows a further overall decline in arts GCSE and A Level entries. Art & Design GCSE saw entries rose 3% between 2020 and 2021 and 13% between 2010 and 2021. But the more 3D-focused Design & Technology GCSE saw a drop of 8% over the last year and a massive of 70% drop between between 2010 and 2021. A level Art & Design entries fell 8% between 2010 and 2021 and Design & Technology fell 49% over the same period.

New narratives to classify the Crafts Council’s collections

Machine ghosts and scissorhands: reclassifying a craft collection, new research from Shai Akram, the Crafts Council’s inaugural Artisa Fellow, reveals new narratives in the Crafts Council’s collection whilst making craft more accessible to a non-specialist audience. The designer, educator and researcher shows how potential outcomes of collections and typologies of classification need to evolve, become more discoverable and reflect the way that making today is an active and changing enquiry.

Craft and arts participation for mental health

Creatively Minded and the NHS is an overview of participatory arts offered by the NHS to people with mental health problems. Craft examples include:

• Craft Residency - a collaborative participatory project to paint and sew fabric, created by Tonic Arts and delivered in partnership with Craft Scotland and staff at Herdmanflat and East Lothian Community Hospitals.
• Cardiff & Vale Health Charity supported Marion Cheung to deliver interactive digital and craft sessions to both staff and patients at St. David’s Hospital. Threads of Memory – The Spaces Between Us looked at innovative ways of working with craft materials, storyboards, poems and digital circuit boards to record creative responses, memories and stories.

Knowledge exchange between higher education and the arts and cultural sector

NCACE reviews skills and capacity for knowledge exchange between higher education and the arts and cultural sector. Findings include a real sense that more evidence exists within the voluntary and the arts sector, but that it’s often hidden behind different terminology, such as collaboration or co-design.

Addressing the climate crisis through culture

(Former) Minister, Caroline Dinenage MP, gave a speech to G20 culture ministers on the role of culture in efforts to address the climate crisis. ‘Cultural heritage is fundamental to what makes us all human; a threat to heritage is a threat to our shared humanity.’