Hello, I’m helping to organise an event in Brighton that I’d love to get Folky sellers, buyers, and the wider crafting community involved in. It’s called Mini Maker Faire, and it’s happening in Brighton on Saturday 3rd September.

For those that aren’t familiar with Maker Faire, here’s a bit of background. They were started a few years ago in the US by O’Reilly, who publish ‘Make’ and ‘Craft’ magazines. They have since grown to be huge multi-day events bringing together makers of all persuasions at 3 annual shows. There are also numerous semi-independent Maker Faires organised by grassroots maker communities, springing up around the world. These are called Mini Maker Faires, and we’re organising one, here in Brighton.

Brighton’s always been a creative place — I know there are lots of Folksy sellers here — and we have thriving maker community, including a busy local hackspace called BuildBrighton where local makers come together to work on projects, use the workshop and tools, and drink beer. BuildBrighton are one of the main organisers, and a big part of this Faire.

Brighton Mini Maker Faire will be a one-day event, free to the public, and it’s at the Brighton Dome, a beautiful venue right in the middle of town. We’ll have all kinds of crafters, tinkerers, hackers and engineers showing off their projects, from robots to knitting, 3D printing to dry felting. We’re also planning some workshops to show people how easy to it is to be a maker, whether it be in fabric crafts or soldering.

There is an open call for makers to apply to show their projects. We want to showcase the finest makers from Brighton, the South East and further afield. The deadline for applications was officially 30th June, but if you’ve got a great project that we’ve just got to show, please do get in touch even if it’s after that date — we’ll be planning the event layout throughout July. You can find out more at http://www.makerfairebrighton.com/makers

If you don’t have a project you’d like to show, we’d still like you to come along. You can find out more on our website, join us on Facebook or stay up to date by following us on Twitter.

And if you have any questions, or you know of a maker who we should definitely invite, please let me know in the comments below. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Sleigh is a maker (of camping gear) and a member of BuildBrighton.

Written by Tash Goswami of www.bletheringcrafts.co.uk

Image by Tideline Designs

Last week I contacted a Maker that I discovered on the internet, with a view to her doing an interview for my craft site Blethering Crafts. She replied, thanking me for asking her but declined because she was not formally trained, with only 3 years experience and retired. She had however exhibited her work in a local gallery and had done a few regional shows.

This got me thinking. When does one qualify to be a Maker? Do you become one after a period of formal training? Is a lengthy experience required? Does one have to do numerous shows, exhibitions and sales? Do you have to be young?!!

In the UK at the moment, many degree courses in Crafts are ending. Ceramics, Textiles, Glass, Woodwork, Jewellery…you name it and it is probably under threat. In the last year or so over 12 major craft degrees were axed. Yet the government insists that crafts are a valid and desired – however they argue that Higher Education is not the exclusive option to getting a Craft based career and that more skills based apprenticeship opportunities need to happen. Alongside this you need to take into consideration that for many people now, studying at degree level is going to be a very costly affair.

I don’t think that you must do a degree or get formally trained to be a Maker. I do think that for each Craft there is a set of skills that need to be learnt but that can be achieved in a myriad of ways, from reading books, joining a local craft group or doing short courses. In fact really, the way I see it, a degree is a great thing to do as you get 3-4 years of concentrated and focussed access to facilities, people, ideas and materials but these things can all be achieved without one. The bit of paper that you get at the end does not get you an exhibition, job or lifestyle – if you get those things it’s because you made it happen, not a bit of paper.

In fact, I think Craft has tried, in recent years, to validate itself against an elitist Arts world by trying to become like it, replacing craftsmanship with snobbery about whether it is craft or Craft and frankly it hampers individuals.

The joy of making is where it is at! Learn your skills however you choose, define yourself by your own values and be clear about why and what you do. Some of us will make work as a hobby, others as a living and someone out there will always like it and someone will not.

Craft in the 21st Century is redefining itself. Opportunities and developments are there for the taking. Can’t get a gallery to exhibit your work, create your own gallery! Maybe a pop up one in a disused space or in your living room or online.

Want to sell your work full time, get yourself armed with good business advice – it does not have to be a formal course, there are books, online sites and business gateways offering loads of free advice. Arm yourself with a clear statement about who you are, what you do and why you do it. Take the time to cost the work properly and charge real prices.

Create selling opportunities like an online shop – there are many collective outlets like Folksy, Etsy etc, join up and get selling. Or maybe do what I do and hold an open house sale event for key calendar dates, valentine’s sales events for men, Easter, Halloween, Christmas – you get the drift!

Stimulate your creative juices by going to artist/crafts forums, reading blogs, visiting exhibitions , watching films, TV documentaries, reading books, visiting the library – anything can be creatively stimulating!

Feeling the economic pinch? Then maybe look at how to diversify your business. Sell how to tutorials, create a craft makers support group, run training courses of your own, set up your own craft fairs and markets. Use social networking to gather a following of customers and interested purchasers.

And finally be generous. Share your story, your discoveries, the places that are holding sales events, funding opportunities and your knowledge. Be generous with yourself, trusting in your creativity and work. The old adage of ‘you reap what you sow’ is really true – you don’t get vegetables if you don’t plant seeds! Or as a good friend always says – “you need to believe in it and put it out there, in order to manifest it”.

Happy making!

Tash Goswami

Creator & Editor of Blethering Crafts – www.bletheringcrafts.co.uk
Freelance Arts Consultant – www.tgconsultancy.co.uk
Maker trading as violetsands – www.violetsands.blogspot.com

If you are interested in contributing to the Folksy Blog please email hilary@folksy.co.uk

We’ve tried to work in the feedback from the testers but a few of the things that have been recommended were not do-able (and not essential) in the short term. Two things particularly stand out:

• Having made a big deal of the ability to commission one of the Makes from the author, we’ve taken that off, for now at least. We’ll introduce this as an option for authors to check in the process rather than as a default. However, you can still point to items of the Make you have for sale in your shop a “can’t be bothered to Make this? Buy one instead”. I like this feature. Of course you need to have one in the shop for sale – if you don’t the text and link will not appear.
• Copyright. We want to be able to give you the ability to manage the rights of your Makes using Creative Commons licensing. This feels right. They are after all, yours. However, we have not had time to build in the Creative Commons element which allows you to choose the license you want so we’ve launched Makes with the existing Terms of Use which gives you ownership of the content but also give Folksy a license to use the content. But we’re all for re-use and sharing and many of you will be too, so the cc license model will be in place in the not-to-distant future.

We really do hope you like Makes. I know there are a heap of tutorials on the web already (mainly on craft blogs). We’re not in any way trying to muscle in on that, rather we want to promote how things are made. This way, people will see the love that goes into your things and consequently be more interested in buying craft things as well as making them. The more we promote what you do, the more we all benefit.

What’s Next?

We’ve got a few more minor amends we’re implementing for the 12th Dec and then the next big milestone is International Sales in late Feb next year.

So, we’re testing Makes this week with a bunch of people who came forward – thank you *so* much you lot. By the end of this week we’ll have collated the feedback and we’ll be making the amends ready to go live. We intend to go live this weekend and with the “how tos” that the volunteers have kindly offered to document. Here’s a big cheer for:

• Spugmeistress
• Lupin
• Marceline
• Alison
• Lucy
• Sarah
• Nicky

Who’s up for that? Anyone? All you’ll need is a bit of time and photos of the ‘thing’ as you’re making it. Of course if you’ve taken images whilst you been making a ‘thing’ before you could “do a Blue Peter” and just pretend it was all done like, now.

For an idea of what we’re trying to do with Makes see The Instructables site. This site covers *everything* (mad stuff like this) and we’re just going to focus on crafty things rather than say how to do gelatin/agar filtration.

Whilst I’m here. This is nice:

The last few weeks have been really interesting. We’ve seen a heap (collective noun for crafters and designers please?!) of new crafters and designers come to Folksy to list things for sale and many of these have brought with them a different ‘type’ of thing. Like recent graduate Paul Allen’s stuff, above. Brilliant.

So, rant over, I’d like to ask you what you think of when you think of ‘Craft’? This is partly in response to this question “The word craft is misused, misunderstood and misplaced. It is used in ways that diminish its credibility” which I came across on the forum of the Craft Scotland site.

NB: for a good overview of the neat stuff at Origin see treehugger’s coverage.

Which for those people using screen readers and / or for those who don’t want to squint this reads:

Join our Manchester Craft Mafia Christmas Markets @ The Whitworth Art Gallery

• Saturday 13th Dec 10-4
• Sunday 14th Dec 12-4

Stalls cost between

]]> http://blog.folksy.com/2008/10/08/christmas-markets/feed 0