Five hundred years ago all the material objects around us were handmade by craftsmen and craftswomen. The industrial revolution brought us the power loom and factory ceramics. Household goods became more affordable, but we have also lost many of the skills of making and mending: nearly a quarter of adults can’t sew on a button. But we are seeing a resurgence in craft, part driven by more leisure time and the popularity of Sewing Bee and Pottery Throwdown on the television. Stuck at home, it was reported that one million people took up knitting during the pandemic.
We may be lucky enough to learn carpentry or to sew and knit by our parents or are taught these skills at school. Artists and crafts people may also teach in their studios and people may also learn in courses offered by independent providers; in London we are lucky to have the Kiln Rooms, Sew it with Love and the Goodlife Centre.
But many people learn craft skills by local authority adult education services or at further education colleges. Grayson Perry and Edmund de Waal are two of the UK’s most well-known ceramic artists whose first lessons were at evening classes in adult education centres. But not everyone gets these opportunities and there are inequalities in people’s access to craft courses in adult and further education.
The adult education budget has halved since 2010. The closure of two large London-based ceramics departments prompted me to map ceramics teaching in adult and further education in 2015. This showed a huge north-south divide in teaching. In the 2015-15 academic year there was over 19,000 hours of ceramics teaching in London (2.94 hours per 1,000 population) and 11,000 hours in the south east (1.62 hours per 1,000 population), but just 0.35 hours per 1,000 people in the north east and 0.58 hours in Yorkshire and the Humber.
