At the second craftscotland held at the SECC in Glasgow on 9 September 2006 AGM project manager James Coutts talked about some of the highlights and took a look at the coming year.

Highlights of the Year

craftfocus

With craftfocus we wanted to create a high quality contemporary craft exhibition that provided a platform for promoting the best of Scottish crafts and increased sales opportunities for makers. This year we assembled a curatorial team of 9 (elected by the Scottish crafts community), for craftfocus. The curatorial team has created three online shows so far each with commissioned photography. Our first online show, Influences, has received over 2000 visits to date.

Initially an online only initiative, the exhibition at the Homes and Interiors Scotland exhibition is the first national exhibition of Scottish craft in the UK that our craftfocus panel have curated.

Craft Association Websites

In January, we completed a new website for Applied Arts Scotland, a charitable organisation that supports applied artists with advice and services.

In conjunction with Parallel 56, 3D2D and Dumfries and Galloway Council Arts team performed a check-up of their websites – to help them work out how their existing sites were performing, and where improvement was needed.

Other crafts associations we are assisting digitally include: Scottish Borders Council, Scottish Glass Society and Scottish Potters Association.

Glossy Magazines

After contacting us, Scottish Life magazine, a high profile American publication, will be featuring textile artist Jilli Blackwood, silversmith Graham Stewart and furniture designer Cecil Tait in their autumn issue.

We helped the Sunday Times with a gift feature at Christmas, which led to earrings by Alison Macleod being included in the article.

Our feature on new graduate Jennifer McHardy led to her being featured in Knitting magazine.

Julia Hallewell’s article on ‘how to buy craft’ was read by the Scottish Arts Council and turned into a small booklet. We helped the Scottish Arts Council source images for the publication, and ‘How to buy craft’ has been distributed to galleries and inserted into Homes and Interiors magazine, as well as distributed here today.

Other media enquiries included the BBC, Guardian newspaper and Vogue magazine.

We have also put two publishers in contact with makers who they wanted to include in books.

craftscotland exhibiting at Homes and Interiors Scotland 06 has generated articles about individual makers in local and national newspapers, as well as on blogs worldwide.   A feature in the Saturday magazine of the Herald featured six makers and we’ve had extensive editorial coverage of the show in Homes and Interiors Scotland.
 
Television

The right TV series or programme could help re-position crafts, dispel existing perceptions and show the world Scotland's world-class makers.

With this in mind, this year we assembled a craft on TV team (Louise Butler, Shannon Tofts, Tina Rose and production company WeMediaGuys), who put together an entry for the The Big Picture Film Competition, setup by Tayscreen Scotland. A committee of delegates at the Tourism Innovation Day at the Perth Concert Hall saw the film during the event although we didn’t win.

The film helped the craft on TV team discover what material existed in Scotland, and it also prompted some new ideas, which we may pitch to a producing company or channel this year.  The film has been downloaded 531 times to date. 

Online Directory

One of the key goals of craftscotland is to provide an inclusive and free website for the Scottish crafts community – giving makers, galleries and retailers their own free webpage (directory entry) The aim of this part of the site was to provide a valuable information source for the sector and promote makers and outlets to potential buyers.

Our target for the second year of the project was to reach 1,000 records on the directory (just over a third of the crafts sector in Scotland). On 24 August 2005 there were 420 makers/venues in the directory. Through a combination of direct mail, associations emailing their members on our behalf, editorial in industry publications, website links and public speaking, as of 6 September, there were 1,008 records (growth of 59%), which is a great achievement.

Some technical developments for the directory – makers can see how many visitors their directory entry has had to date, and entries with postcodes are now plotted on a map.

Editorial

Edited by Tina Rose, the craftscotland website provides news and features about designers, their work and crafts events and we’ve reviewed and written about the key craft events over the past year.

The website now features over 978 images of work by Scotland’s leading makers, covering all disciplines, and also by international makers, creating a virtual resource of information and inspiration. Our most popular story over the past year was the feature on the Scottish makers going to Chelsea Crafts Fair in 2005.

The website generates an increasing number of enquiries, which include helping makers access advice on grants, funding, studio space, marketing, shop space, selling events and workshops.

We have forwarded enquiries from individuals about buying work or from galleries to over 30 different makers.

We have also helped the international fashion house Moschino access information on Scottish jewellery for their spring collection.

Research

Our annual benchmarking research with the makers registered on the online directory helps us to measure the impact of craftscotland. Here are some key findings when we compared the 2005 and 2006 surveys.

• Craft businesses are now seeking support in managing finances and the employment of personnel.  In 2005 the focus was on working with outlets, selling techniques and market research.  Support in marketing and promotion remains high on the agenda.

• Galleries, outlets, exhibitions and fairs continue to be the favoured selling techniques of our membership. Email promotion, maker co-operatives and media publicity has overtaken selling from own premises, word of mouth and repeat custom.

• The majority of craft businesses use of technology in their business; there is a noticeable increase in the number of makers using Broadband. 

• There is an increase in the use of the craftscotland website, with promotion and getting news updates continuing to be the major uses of the site [chart onscreen]

• There is an increase in all frequencies of visit to the website, with a move towards monthly access, and a dramatic fall in the numbers that do not access the web site at all

• In 2005 makers considered the internet to be important to their business.  They now view it as essential.

• The majority of businesses show a steady increase in turnover over the year

Another target for this year was to increase the frequency our membership visited the website. Last year, 15% of the membership visited the site monthly. This year, over 30% visit monthly. Last year, 3% visited the site weekly, this year, over 15% visit weekly.

Statistics

In the first year of the project we had 135,469 unique users between 1 Aug 2004 and 31 July 2005.  In the second year there were 399,615 unique users between 1 Sep 2005 and 31 August 2006.

The definition of unique users is how many individuals have visited the website. If a person visits craftscotland.org twice in a week that would count as 1 unique user.

In April 2005, we started sending monthly emails on crafts news, events, opportunities and training. The monthly email list at the end of August 2005 stood at 543 members. As of 6 September, the email list now stands at 1,119 members.

International Activity

In the second year of the project, craftscotland began to build its profile with international audiences, and develop contacts to secure one exhibition venue for an international craftscotland exhibition in 2007. We also continued to publish editorial features on the craftscotland website with an international focus.

The remit of craftscotland may also increase in the future to take up the current Crafts Council activity of taking groups of makers and galleries under the craftscotland banner on outward missions internationally.

With all this in mind, we submitted two successful applications to the Scottish Arts Council to visit:

Artifact, Bruges
New York International Gift Fair
San Francisco International Gift Fair
Talente, Munich
Schmuck, Munich
SOFA, New York
Collect, London

Based on the findings of these trips, we now have three galleries interested in taking an exhibition of Scottish craft.

In terms of editorial, we have written stories about Scottish makers exhibiting in Kyoto, Itami, Tokyo, Korea, New York, Sydney, Hungary, Denmark, St Ives and London, and during her recent residency ceramicist Frances Priest sent us a diary from Thailand.  As well as this, we have been asked to suggest and supply information about Scottish craft to magazines in Spain, France, America, and Australia.

Plans for Year 3

So that was year two. Here is a quick list of highlights of what we plan to do in the third year:

We’ll further evaluate the options of: organising and holding an international exhibition, Ideas raised by our international contacts on visits by Friends groups of certain museums to Scotland will also be investigated.

Grow the online directory to 1,500 maker/outlet records (50% of an estimated 3,000 Scottish crafts businesses).

Discover the top 3 under-represented geographic regions and disciplines on the craftscotland maker directory. Work with organisations to increase their representation on the directory.

Establish a horizon-scanning group who will investigate the latest technologies that could be applied to the craftscotland website. They will evaluate likely costs and benefits and move forwards if an idea looks promising.

Address the needs of craftscotland makers who find it hard discovering suppliers. We’ll build a craft supplier database of those who sell crafts materials and other useful supplies/technologies in Scotland

Work with visitscotland to develop editorial to encourage visitors and people in Scotland to see craft. Work with Museum of Scotland, Aberdeen Art Gallery and others to collate and publish details of craft in permanent collections across Scotland

Develop content to encourage appreciation and interest in craft through new features.

Develop the 5 core sections in Business Advice working alongside other existing resources. 

Provide editorial on the key areas makers require support or advice on, as identified by the 2006 survey: managing finances, exporting, finding workspace, employment/personnel, legal, online ordering, marketing by email, building a website.

The Board will work hard to secure the future of craftscotland beyond the 3 years of the project.
 
So craftscotland is now two. The impressive growth in terms of users of the site and what our users are saying about us point towards a tremendous potential growth for the project in the coming year.  As a final point, craftscotland is here for you. Please continue to make us aware of what you believe is needed to drive craft forwards in Scotland. craftscotland and their Board will then do everything they can to respond and deliver.
 
James Coutts
Project Manager
craftscotland

Slides from the presentation are available on request, please contact james at craftscotland dot org

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