Just Whose Craft Is It?

A few slides from my talk in Oslo the other week.

I’m putting them here, because the first slide, to me, is the crux of what craft’s all about. It’s a dividing line of sorts, that makes people argue if craft is this, or if craft is that.

Is craft more populist? Or is it about honed skill?


I vote for the people.


The bottom two slides are a quote and a photo from the Wise Fool Puppet Intervention.






If you happened to be at the talk or just are curious about what aspects of punk and DIY started my interest in DIY craft, it mainly came from Riot Grrrl.

These two videos were ones I was going to show the students, but wasn’t able to. Both clips from the documentary Don’t Need You: The Herstory of Riot GRRRL.

1. Don’t Need You trailer
2. documentary clip



To me, that’s what’s craft is all about. Raw emotion, raw creativity, raw issues transformed into something heartfelt, beautiful and, yes, of the people.