Welcome

Welcome to the blog for the CARE project.  This project is designed in two stages:  an initial, introductory phase, where we work with a small number of creative participants from the local communities, who are skilled in some aspect of making.  Then we take their stories and artefacts and pair these with a group of people who are still learning skills.  These creative respondents take the stories and the artefacts, and craft a response to them.  Then, in the final part of this first phase, all the participants meet each other at an event in May, where we all see what was made, and investigate both what we think has come out of the first phase, and where the participants might like the project to go from here.

It’s of primary importance that it’s the participants who decide in which direction(s) the project develops.  The A in CARE stands for asset-based, meaning (in communities) that it’s understood that there are already many assets in local communities, that communities in most cases don’t need people coming in to provide education or organisation or information and tell people what to do; often a community can find ways to assess what it already has, and to develop from there.  In this project we are trying to see how communities can look at the craft assets already in place, and see what they feel they would like to develop from them (if anything).

It’s an exciting project and one which we hope will be fun and useful for all the participants.  We are already in the process of making connections with local people and groups who might like to be involved, and interesting things are coming up!