00:00Time spent at home during the pandemic saw more people getting crafty.
00:04And arts and crafts is still growing in popularity, drawing in a whole new generation of makers.
00:09The market for buying and selling crafts globally is booming.
00:13It's projected to grow at 9.2% and reach $1.8 trillion by the year 2032.
00:20And this seems to be driven in part by crafts' popularity among Gen Z.
00:24That's people born between 1997 and 2012.
00:27Around a third of teenagers now enjoy learning crafts such as knitting, sewing, jewellery making and crochet.
00:34And here in the UK, a quarter of all arts and crafts start-ups are by people from Gen Z.
00:40Let's talk now to Natalie Melton, who's Executive Director of the Crafts Council in the UK.
00:45Welcome to the programme, Natalie. Thank you for coming on.
00:47So is this a boom in crafts driven by a post-pandemic boost or is it something else?
00:54I think it's a trend that we've seen growing over a number of years and certainly the pandemic probably helped to accelerate that interesting craft when people were at home and finding ways to entertain themselves.
01:08But I think it speaks to a far wider set of societal shifts over the last 20 years or so.
01:16So people's interest in understanding the provenance of where things have come from, a concern and interest in sustainability and making ethical choices about their purchases.
01:29And of course, as a reaction to what sometimes feels like an increasingly screen-based world that we that we live in.
01:39And craft is the perfect antidote to some of that.
01:42So obviously, a lot of people make craft just for fun, but some people make money out of it, don't they?
01:47How is that monetised? Is it selling, teaching, building a brand? What is it?
01:54I think it's a combination of all of those things.
01:57And I think when you look at the makers in the UK, the vast majority of makers have what we would term a portfolio career.
02:07So they are making and selling goods, but they might also be teaching either within the formal education system or running workshops and courses.
02:19Craft experience is a very big part of that kind of boom in the craft economy.
02:25And for some, they're balancing that with a career that's entirely outside of either craft or the creative industries.
02:32So there are some online platforms which have made this a lot easier, haven't they?
02:36Etsy, eBay, others, I'm sure.
02:38How have these online platforms changed that business model for people who make crafts?
02:45Well, I think it's a massive shift.
02:47Technology has removed barriers to entry into the market.
02:52And of course, you can test your products and put them online while you're still holding down the job
02:57and sort of testing to see whether they sell.
03:02So I think that's definitely helped to kind of democratize craft and also blur the distinctions
03:07between what we would once have called the kind of amateur and the professional.
03:12A lot of people are coming into craft as a second career because they've had the opportunity to learn a skill as a hobby
03:24and been bitten by the bug and start to see whether they can make a career shift into making and selling craft.
03:34And I think that speaks to the sort of changing work habits of the Gen Z generation,
03:41where I think they're much more inclined to have a side hustle or hold down two or three different things.
03:49They don't have the same job security that there once was, perhaps 20 or 30 years ago.
03:56And I think they're seeing that as an opportunity to be able to kind of develop a mixture of ways in which they earn a living.
04:02Natalie, great to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming on the programme.
04:04Natalie Melton there from Crafts Council in the UK.
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