Elena Lo Presti

@elenalopresti

I'm a multidisciplinary artist and creative and managing director of Craft Forward, a community interest company based in London that facilitates craft workshops focused on wellbeing. Our vision is to be an inclusive, accessible, community-based organisation, where arts and crafts are approached as smaller actions towards tackling bigger social issues. Our mission is to disrupt the current elitism within the contemporary arts and crafts worlds by providing a range of accessible and inclusive workshops that purposefully value connecting and socializing above skills. We started our journey working with communities in South London, and we now aim to open creativity to all, prioritizing people with barriers and to promote collaboration, social interactions and wellbeing, going against fast, capitalist structures of production and artmaking.

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Craft is contemporary because it is progressive, because creating things by hand yourself proposes an alternative microeconomic of local making, a system of exchange more akin to bartering with its emphasis on trade and tactile connections to supply-and-demand. It is environmentally conscious and respectful of the earth's diminishing resources. Cra

Julia Bryan-Wilson • Eleven propositions to the question: What is contemporary about craft?

British cultural policy has been hindered by decades of protectionist infighting between opposing special interests (Hewison 1995). Instead we need a more balanced under- standing of the role and worth of the arts in our society – one which simultaneously embraces their aesthetic, cultural, economic and social values, and allows for the differ- ent

François Matarasso • Use or ornament? The social impact of participation in the arts

The Exchange

theexchangeerith.com

Craftsmanship and

Use or ornament? The social impact of participation in the arts

François Matarasso • 3 highlights

artshealthresources.org.uk

art and

Clay Commons

open.spotify.com

art and

Bringing people together: Almost without exception, the projects studied have made a significant contribution to bringing people together. At a simple level, more than nine out of ten respondents made new friends as a result of their involvement. This is such an ordinary outcome of participating in the arts that it can easily be underestimated: ma

François Matarasso • Use or ornament? The social impact of participation in the arts

The Great Pottery Throw Down

channel4.com

Craftsmanship and

Craft Forward

craft-forward.com

community growth and

Craft is contemporary because it is queer, with its nelly yarn bombers and wild cross-stich faggotry and dykes who throw pots . Craft's queerness keys into interlocking discourses of pleasure, shame, disappointment, difficulty, exuberance, and community-building.