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The Association for Contemporary Jewellery
The Association for Contemporary Jewellery is devoted to the promotion, representation, understanding and development of contemporary jewellery in the United Kingdom and abroad.
Alarming news from Craft Scotland: new DCMS classification for Craft
Consultation on new DCMS classification for Craft
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport have been working with partner organisations NESTA, Creative Skillset and Creative and Cultural Skills to review and update the DCMS Creative Industries Economic Estimates (CIEE).
Their review document, “Classifying and Measuring the Creative Industries,” has now been published, and interested parties are invited to input to the outcomes of the review by way of a consultation.
“Classifying and Measuring the Creative Industries” is a starting point to suggest which occupations and industries should be included in an updated DCMS classification.
The review uses the idea of “creative intensity” (the proportion of people doing creative jobs within each industry) to suggest which industries should be included. If the proportion of people doing creative jobs in a particular industry is substantial, above a 30% threshold, the industries are candidates for inclusion within the Creative Industries classification.
In the review document, it has been recommended that Craft be removed as a measured creative industry. The document states:
"Most crafts businesses are too small to identify in business survey data, so while there has been a crafts section in the former classification, we’ve not been able to provide GVA data. The removal of a number of craft roles from the latest update to the ONS occupational coding (removal of Goldsmiths, Silversmiths, Precious Stone workers, for example) into the more generic ‘Other skilled trades’ occupational group has made crafts even harder to identify. We recognise that high-end craft occupations contain a creative element, but the view is that in the main, that these roles are more concerned with the manufacturing process, rather than the creative process."
Craft Scotland believe that Craft is and should continue to be considered a Creative Industry. We represent nearly 47% of the estimated 3,350 Scottish craft making businesses on our website, and know that for many makers the creative design process behind crafted items is integral to their practice.
It is important that there is UK wide consistency of Creative Industry definitions. The Arts and Business Scotland Annual Business Survey carried out by the Scottish Government (August 2012) includes ‘Craft’ as a Creative Industry, as well as ‘Fashion and Textiles’ and ‘Design,’ and will continue to do so.
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport have created a response form for their consultation, which is available on their website.
Craft Scotland will contribute to this consultation. In the coming weeks we will provide guidance on our website for Scottish makers who wish to feed in to the consultation, to ensure that a voice is given to the craft sector.
The consultation will be open for 8 weeks, and closes at midnight on 14 June 2013.
Find out more about the proposed updates to the DCMS Creative Indus....
SOURCE: http://www.craftscotland.org/craft-news/news-article.html?consultat...
The Justified Sinner
This is happening in England too. There have been petitions against it. It is the product of a determined long-term policy of turning the UK into a "Service Economy" where nobody makes or produces. It is not surprising that this is happening, in some ways. Unfortunately, the second-generation nouveau-riche private-school brigade who run this country want to erase the dirty-hands manufacturing past from the history of the country. (This is true of both the left and the right.)
In Scotland, this is especially frightening as we rely heavily on tourism-related enterprises, in which craft plays a large part. An example of how this thinking has been allowed to permeate the general approach to the economics of the country is that it is now impossible to study hand-loom weaving in an art-school or college in Scotland: this, obviously, is causing problems for the tweed industry, the death of which has been all-too-frequently narrowly avoided.
Craft Scotland, I am sure, will fight this idea strongly and I can only urge people to use the response form to do the same.
Apr 24, 2013