Craft and the Creative Economy

According to Etsy, the 'eBay for the handmade', $1.35 billion in merchandise sales flowed through their website in 2013. While Etsy may be the highest-profile online site enabling small creative producers to market internationally, it represents just part of a wider turn to home-based creative micro-enterprise. Enabled by the global distribution affordances of the internet, increasing numbers of makers, a majority of them women, are working from home, often as a way of balancing caring responsibilities with paid employment. Craft and the Creative Economy examines the place of craft in the contemporary cultural economy. It addresses why we are now seeing such a significant growth of interest in craft and making, what consumer demand for handmade objects tells us about consumer preferences, authenticity and ethical consumption, and, the cultural work models that underpin craft micro-enterprise.