00:00I'm Julia Bickerstaff and I'm a neon maker. I own a company called Neon Craft and I've
00:08been making neon for a very long time now. I started in 1987 and, you know, it's just
00:16great. I love it as much now as I did then and I have made neon for all sorts of situations
00:22and places all over the world and it's been a fantastic journey, it really has. And as
00:28technology has changed over the years, so has the appetite for neon. So the things
00:33that were lit with neon have changed. Traditionally it was everything was lit with neon, even
00:38if you didn't know it, it had neon behind, lighting it up. But today, neon making is
00:44actually an endangered craft, which is kind of sad really, but it's the way things go
00:49and technology has advanced. There are simpler technologies in some respect to install. Neon's
00:56made of glass and the new technology, LEDs, is not and it's quite rugged and can be handled
01:02quite roughly, whereas neon being glass is quite fragile. So you can imagine the actual
01:07process of change that has taken place for installing. For example, I do feel for sign
01:12fitters that are 100 foot up the side of the outside of a building with a fragile piece
01:16of glass trying to install it, they'd much prefer some LEDs that can just stick on with
01:21some double sided sticky tape to do it. So you can imagine why and the appetite for change
01:27really. Also, LEDs can mimic neon, even though they're not neon. There is a little bit of
01:33a battle there at the moment where neon is being sort of sidelined by LED neon-esque
01:40signage, and they're sold as neon signs when they're not. And this has had a really quite
01:47detrimental effect on the traditional glass-made neon. But it looks good, you know, but it's
01:54cheap and people want the real thing. So it's great that people are actually supporting
02:00people like me to actually make things, a craft which is handmade in glass, fully recyclable.
02:07So I think there is something of a future albeit it'll be very, very different and I
02:11think it will be something of a struggle in the future for people who make neon to be
02:16able to carry on and make a good living. I'm involved with Heritage Crafts and they
02:22keep record of crafts of all kinds. And neon making has been put on the list of endangered
02:28crafts since, I think it was 2019 when it went on there. And I'm now one of just a very
02:34small handful of people within the UK that still make real neon with glass. We're dotted
02:42around here and there. There used to be hundreds of us and now there's just a handful which
02:46is a little sad really.
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