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Craft and sustainable development : reflections on Scottish craft and pathways to sustainability

This journal paper locates the results of an earlier scoping study that explored the actual and potential connections between craft and sustainability. This involved both conceptual connections and an applied investigation using Fife as a specific geographical region. Specifically this paper locates the earlier scoping study within an international perspective and identifies a number of “leverage points” that emerge ie. links with crafts economic and educational models, and pathways to sustainability through building resilient communities. This is the first study of its kind exploring the shared values and ways of thinking between cotemporary craft practitioners and the sustainability movement. The article has advanced theoretical connections between these two spheres and therefore the potential to influence practice.

The paper discusses Sustainable Development involving a concern for the longevity of all forms of life, for social equity and for the environment conceived as a context of relationships that exists and take on meaning in relation to the beings that inhabit it. This calls for the explicit acknowledgement that the transition to more sustainable societies requires a major change and reorientation of ways of thinking; lifestyles; consumer patterns and values. This is significant as it seeks to broaden the scope of sustainability to include ontological approaches and shift away from the dominant technological solutions normally explored. The Crafts community’s ways of being and relationship to materials are central as is its capacity to forge links and connections with the sustainability movement and agenda.