Crafting the local: the lived experience of craft production in the Northern Isles of Scotland

ABSTRACT

National creative and cultural industries policy agendas tend to focus on the economic impact of the sector often favouring scalable digital activities based in global clusters, which underpin notions of growth. There has, however, been a re-emergence of craft, which may not be scalable in the same way, into public debate, with benefits linked to educational, cultural and economic policy agendas. Accordingly, policymakers have begun to view craft as a stimulus to develop local and regional economies, skills and materials in relation to wider networks. Within this push towards craft-driven creative place making and economic growth, it has been argued that more sophisticated understandings of the “local” are needed that go beyond those which are inward and parochial. Based on AHRC-funded empirical research undertaken in the Northern Isles of Scotland with craft practitioners, this article attempts to provide evidence of the place-based nature of craft work highlighting both opportunities as well as constraints linked to contexts that are often referred to as remote and peripheral when contrasted with urban locations. We argue for future investigation into, what we term, fractal growth – growth and development that considers multiple dimensions – as being a valid and valuable outcome of creative practice, and which cannot be easily scaled.

KEYWORDS:

• Craft
• local
• lived experience
• cultural assets
• innovation
• fractal growth

Acknowledgements

Funded by the AHRC: Grant number AH/P013325/1 and with thanks to the stakeholders and participants in DING across the H&I region.

Notes on contributors

Lynn-Sayers McHattie is Programme Director for research in the Innovation School at The Glasgow School of Art. She is Principal Investigator for Design Innovation for New Growth, AHRC follow-on-funding from Design in Action, an AHRC funded Knowledge Exchange Hub, where she acted as Co-Investigator. Her research interests include craft in the creative and cultural economy that connect to the indigenous landscape and culture of islands.

Katherine Champion is a Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Stirling. Her research interests include the spatial organisation of the creative economy, creative labour and cultural and creative industries policy.

Michael Pierre Johnson gained his PhD through Design in Action in 2016, and has since been working in multiple projects of collaborative creative engagement at The Glasgow School of Art. He was recently awarded an AHRC funded Innovation Leadership Fellowship in the Creative Economy. His research interests are on making the effects and viability of Design Innovation approaches more explicit within complex collaborative contexts.

ORCID

Lynn-Sayers McHattie http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2790-5187

Additional information

Funding

Funded by the AHRC [grant number AH/P013325/1] and with thanks to the stakeholders and participants in DING across the H&I region.