Make Your Own Ark: Indie craft's sustainable imperative

Abstract

The prospect of a sustainable future is intimately bound with our cultural materiality. Industrialisation crystallised a conception of materiality that has precipitated many of the environmental challenges we face today. This includes such aspects as the notion of disposability of material goods, centralised, streamlined production and reliance on non- renewable materials and energy. But, as Michael Braungart and William McDonough (2009) have notably pointed out, while environmental catastrophe is a bleak prospect, so is forsaking materiality altogether. We find pleasure from the objects in our lives, on our bodies, in our homes. They help us to be comfortable, provide aesthetic stimulation, define our identities and speak to that part of us that craves beauty. This paper considers how the advent of a subcultural amateur handcraft revival, indie craft, challenges the mainstream industrialised modes of manufacturing, production and consumption of material goods while at the same time celebrating an enjoyment of materiality. It examines this with particular reference to matters of environmentalism and sustainability, which can be considered an aspect of indie craft's wider social mandate.