Making a Slow Revolution

I have been reading Helen Carnac's blog which investigates and prompts discussion about craft and its relationship with the Slow Movement. 

At the beginning of this course I did actually do some reading on the Slow food movement, it has developed as a critique of the consequences of our unsustainable consumerist culture and its increasingly fast lifestyles. 

‘The slow movement is a cultural shift towards slowing down life’s pace. It is not organized and controlled by a singular organization. A principal characteristic of the Slow Movement is that it is propounded, and its momentum maintained, by individuals that constitute the expanding global community of Slow. Although it has existed in some form since the Industrial Revolution its popularity has grown considerably since the rise of Slow Food and Cittaslow in Europe, with Slow initiatives spreading as far as Australia and Japan’ (Wikipedia) 

Craft skills are usually acquired over time, they are passed down through generations, can be learnt through iteration, therefore crafts that are considered a traditional practice and the communities in which they sit can often be considered Slow.  Slow is definitely not a new concept in relation to crafts on a number different levels. These notions of Slow can relate to time and process, the nature of production and consumption, lcoal markets and use of local materials, as well as the societal aspects.  

Key charactersitics of crafting and the Slow movement are:

• The relationships between craft and craft processes and social relationships, interactions and activities
• the storytelling elements withincrafts and craft processes, communication and the skills that are passed through generations
• The refletion aspect of the creator during the crafting process
• The lifecyle of the objects created