Photographer Alun Callender captures the crafts world's response to the COVID-19 crisis

Brighton-based Alun Callender has been photographing makers for over a decade, often for the pages of Crafts magazine. When the pandemic took hold and he found himself gazing at the outside world through Instagram, he was amazed to witness how quickly craftspeople repurposed their skills for the common good, making scrubs for the UK’s national health service.

As lockdown eased, he began connecting with Scrub Hubs – groups of volunteer scrub-makers – in Brighton and London, then photographing them in their makeshift home studios. ‘Craftspeople are my tribe so this series was a way to regain a sense of belonging, while celebrating the people who had stepped up to the plate and used their skills to help others,’ the told photographer told Crafts magazine, for its September/October issue - out now. ‘It also enabled me to get over my fear of going out.’

Among his subjects was Judith Grant, a dressmaker whose usual day job involves managing teams of seamstresses doing production alterations for fashion shows. Callender photographed her in her garden studio where she was working for a Brighton scrub hub. Over in London he shot, among others, the young Vietnamese fashion designer Anh Nguyen, who was making scrubs in a spare bedroom.

‘I discovered a whole new set of people that I might not otherwise have encountered, particularly because many of them work behind the scenes,’ Callender says. ‘Some expressed anger that they were having to plug a gap that the government had failed to fill, but I wanted to be apolitical, recording a moment in time, and people’s valuable contributions. It’s not natural for craftspeople to do nothing.’