excerpt from Making a Slow Revolution

taking time: craft and the Slow Movement - Project Summary taken from Craftspace.co.uk

Slowness is also associated with craft skills: skill which is acquired over time, cannot be rushed and is intuitively learned. Many makers today aredeveloping critical positions in response to our consumer behaviour; questioning modes of production through new processes, looking at issues of stewardship and sustainability, as well ascollective making and reworking everyday objects.

Craftspace is collaborating with the maker and academic Helen Carnac to develop the research, exhibition and its related events programme.

Check the blog at makingaslowrevolution.wordpress.com to join in with the latest discussions about what SLOW means in current society. Also keep checking to see the latest podcasts from Russell Martin’s ‘Analogue’ project, which will explore people’s reactions to SLOW.

The slow movement is a cultural shift towards slowing down life’s pace. It is not organised and controlled by a singular organisation. A principal characteristic of the Slow Movement is that is propounded, and its momentum maintained, by individuals that constitute the expanding community of Slow.

http://www.craftspace.co.uk/page.asp?fn=2&id=57&stp=1&grp=2
http://makingaslowrevolution.wordpress.com

Excerpt

An Ongoing Conversation between Andy Horn and Helen Carnac

The review emphasises that the debate about the nature of production and of consumption continues to be central to the identity and discussion of craft. It is its very unresolved state that provides an opportunity to continue to debate its many arguments and positions, and in the context of our project and blog, enables us to provide a mirror to wider national and global concerns about the changing nature of society, consumerism, sustainability and the competition of cheap skilled production and design and to which the slow movement is one response. It is surprising how long the shadow of William Morris – referenced in the article – falls.

http://makingaslowrevolution.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/an-ongoing-conversation-between-andy-horn-and-helen-carnac/