Crafts Council Insight and advocacy Policy briefings

May 2022

This month:

Several new initiatives to tackle inequalities and discrimination, including the launch of Dr Karen Patel’s study on craft social enterprises
A national plan for cultural education
New research to explore the experience of creative self-employed people
Plus new findings on rural creative clusters, online craft sales, creativity, who runs the arts and strengthening cultural data.

Loop side table - pink with brass inlay, James Trundle, Porter + Trundle

Making more changes in craft

Building on the findings of the Making Changes in Craft report about the challenges faced by women of colour in the craft sector, we continue to partner Dr Karen Patel at Birmingham City University. Karen’s blog describes Phase 2 of the project which will focus on a series of case studies of craft social enterprises in the UK and Australia. She will explore how they have adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how they bring people together and engage their communities.
The NeuroArts Blueprint initiative published a strategic action plan last year to bring the arts into the mainstream of medicine and public health. This year, the Blueprint team has begun work on the plan’s implementation, identifying three focus areas to cultivate the field of neuroarts — building infrastructure, building evidence and building community.
Middlesex University is organising 4 online research seminars on De-/Anti-/Post-colonial Feminisms in Fine Art and Textile Craft, including one on Decolonising Craft.
Julie’s Bicycle has launched The Creative Climate Justice Hub, a library of climate justice resources for artists and cultural practitioners who want to understand the systemic causes of the climate crisis, how it intersects with issues of social, economic and environmental injustice and how arts and culture is responding creatively.

A new national plan for cultural education

Earlier this year, the Department for Education published a White Paper which includes a pledge for the Department to work with the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and Arts Council England (ACE) to develop a National Plan for Cultural Education.

The Government pledges (paragraph 64) that, ‘As part of a richer school week, all children should be entitled to take part in sport, music and cultural opportunities. These opportunities are an essential part of a broad and ambitious curriculum, and support children’s health, wellbeing and wider development, particularly as we recover from the pandemic. The government will publish updated plans to support sport and music education in 2022, and will publish a cultural education plan in 2023, working with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England. This will include how best to support young people who wish to pursue careers in our creative and cultural industries. We will build on our high-quality citizenship education by supporting the National Youth Guarantee, promoting volunteering and expanding access to the Duke of Edinburgh Award and Cadet Schemes.’

The Cultural Learning Alliance explores what it means here.

Exploring the experience of creative self-employed people

Self-employed workers and freelancers have been hit hard by the pandemic. Up to 60 per cent of those working in the creative industries lost all their work during the pandemic and at least 200,000 self-employed Londoners were excluded from Government support. Creative UK and the Mayor of London’s Culture Team have formed a partnership to tackle systemic inequalities and will host an event in July 2022 to test, prioritise and develop ideas with the aim of creating a more sustainable creative freelance model.

And the Centre for Cultural Value has published recommendations for policy makers to help the cultural sector rebuild post-Covid. They respond to their earlier Culture in Crisis report and include the need to:

Develop a national ‘Freelance Charter’ for the creative economy (this includes self-employed and/or atypical workers, such as are typical in craft)
Commission further research into the role of the creative and cultural sector in supporting local socioeconomic needs.

Creative business clusters in rural areas

The creative industries Policy & Evidence Centre has mapped and examined the determinants of England’s rural creative microclusters. They are spread widely across England, with around a third of all rural creative firms operating within a cluster. The research finds that businesses become more productive through being co-located but in rural areas informal networks may need more external support.

The research was informed by evidence that local place-based assets have provided opportunities for creative sub-sectors such as arts and crafts to flourish, particularly in remote rural areas. This is illustrated in some case studies.

Online craft sales increasing

The 2022 Cockpit Effect report shows a significant increase in makers actively selling their work online. In a year when many routes to market were blocked, fairs were cancelled and exhibitions or retailers had to close, 71% of Cockpit makers were selling online.

The UK’s global share of the art market fell by 3% to 17% last year to its lowest level in a decade. Figures were published in the 2022 Art Basel/UBS Global Art Market report. The value of art and antiques imported into the UK in 2020 was $2.1bn, down by one third on 2019. Imports fell a further 18% last year, leaving them at almost half the value of 2019.

How creative are we?

Most Britons (82%) consider themselves to be creative and more than a quarter (27%) feel more creative now than before the COVID-19 pandemic started according to a new V&A study.

Initial findings from the April 2022 wave of the Audience Agency’s Cultural Participation Monitor look at how attitudes towards audience safety, home working, local attendance, and the impact of the cost of living crisis are shifting as the pandemic moves into its latest phase. Nearly half of people say that they engaged with arts and culture online in some form during the pandemic. There is much increased willingness to attend events and optimism about future attendance, but the desire for safety measures continues and the cost of living crisis is a barrier to engagement.

Who runs the arts?

A new report analyses who runs the arts in England. A social network analysis of arts boards suggests the key players on England’s arts boards are individuals with backgrounds and expertise in business, financial and accounting services. There are now significant numbers of shared board memberships between financial organisations and cultural organisations.

Rating higher education research

The majority of UK-based academic research in the arts is either "world-leading" (4 star) or "internationally excellent" (3 star), according to higher education’s research excellence framework.

Strengthening data on the cultural sector

DCMS has commissioned a study to develop an understanding of possible ways to strengthen data on the cultural sector. The aim is to better understand its value and contribution to the UK economy and society, and to enable more effective policy development.

The report acknowledges that there are a whole range of cultural organisations and government bodies who hold data about the cultural economy. It sets out recommendations to consider how to create a better evidence base for England’s cultural economy in a collaborative way. These include building a cultural sector data platform, collecting data on freelancers and the labour market data, as well as common standards, indicators and formats.

The representation of the crafts sector in national data sets has improved following Council research and advocacy, but remains poorly reflected. We’ll be watching closely to see how the recommendations are carried out.

May 2022

May 2022

Making more changes in craft

A new national plan for cultural education

Exploring the experience of creative self-employed people

Creative business clusters in rural areas

Online craft sales increasing

How creative are we?

Who runs the arts?

Rating higher education research

Strengthening data on the cultural sector

UK's global share in the art market

Read more

March 2022

April 2022