The Value of Design in Craft for a More Sustainable Future

Key concepts of sustainability in the contemporary consumer society include cradle-to-cradle, slowfashion, locally-made, re-use, recycle and re-make (or upcycle). Each of these concepts focuses on the design and manufacture of products that are essentially made to comply to a theoretical sustainable framework, thus enabling people to live in harmony with our planet. In an ideal world we would consume and waste less however, to be truly sustainable we also require a healthy economy and so there is dichotomy to be resolved in our consumption behaviours and economic needs; Craft practices have been identified as fitting the bill rather aptly allowing us, in theory, to consume goods at less expense to the environment. Currently we are experiencing a period of, let’s call it Crafts Nouveau, unlike the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries where craft was employed by designer-entrepreneurs, and unlike the Art Nouveau Movement which again harnessed the skills of designers and artists, today amateur craft-workers are joining the trained artisans in bringing hand-crafted items to the marketplace in their droves. Online platforms such as eBay and Etsy are helping such keen, but untrained producers of craft articles to set up micro businesses to sell their wares adding considerably to the amount of stuff available to consumers. As Luckman (2013: 260) states with regard to Etsy, there is ‘no gatekeeping around formal training’ and that this ‘inclusiveness’ potentially fixes a price of less value to all craft items, including the work of those with comparatively higher skill sets and expertise. The Craft Council (2014) reported 11,620 craft businesses operating in the UK employing around 43,250 people, of which, almost 17% are unregistered microbusinesses; while it is not to say that all of these unregistered