Working alone, working together: exploring craft learning in open access community making spaces

This research uses ethnographic methods to examine the experience of learning craft skills in artist-led and community-led craft spaces, with the home setting used as a counterpoint. I spent six months engaging in informal craft learning alongside others in a ceramics workshop and a printmaking workshop, and embroidering at home, in order to understand embodied and situated aspects of learning craft skills in shared spaces as an inexperienced maker. I find that the processes of making, and learning making, are iterative and messy, with the research process reflecting this messiness. The analogue making space can be conceptualised as a ‘permission space’ that extends the notion of Oldenburg’s (1999) third place through drawing attention to aspects of potential and constraint for the amateur maker. In relation to this I draw out the temporary, liminal nature of such spaces, through focus on commodified aspects of the experience, and in finding that this is a space in which to be otherwise (Woodyer, 2012). I show how improvisation is a key aspect of developing both skills and creative voice, and that the journey towards enskilment is not linear, or even necessary, in such spaces.
The application of theories of play to the journey towards enskilment extends the work of Brown, Greig, and Ferraro (2017) and Patchett & Mann (2017). Through its focus on autotelic aspects of informal creative activity, this research offers a counterpoint to the current significant cultural and societal emphasis placed on the value of instrumental aspects of everyday creativity; this research also offers potential for future investigation into the relationship between autotelic creative practice and strategic learning in informal craft learning contexts.