art & craft on the rise?
The photo shows a queue at a local art and craft supply shop I was in recently. People are queueing for the tills. The narrow aisles are impassable, as people stop and choose what to take home with them. The shelves are heaving with stock. It's an irrisistable place.
Unfortunately for me and most of the people I know, it's in Singapore. At the same time, in my own home town, in the last six months a fabulous store, run for generations by the same family, has closed its doors for good. And in the next town the equally fabulous local art store is currently winding up its closing down sale, although new owners do seem to be in the offing.
And yet, if one were to listen to the news, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Britain was art and craft mad. "The UK's Creative Industries are a veritable powerhouse and contribute more than £8 million an hour to the national economy," said Ed Vaizey, the UK's minister of state for culture and the digital economy earlier this year.
£8,000,000 an hour! You would wonder wouldn't you? Admittedly that value covers an enormous range of industries, but in Manchester city centre, twenty years ago, the following all had book stores: WH Smith, Waterstones, Dillons, Hatchards, Blackwells (2 branches), SPCK, Sherratt & Hughes, Hammicks. Now, I believe there is only WHS and Waterstones. Our independent art and craft shops are disappearing at an equal rate. Yes, Hobbycraft stock a wide range of stuff, from knitting machines to airfix kits, and that's great, but they don't stock everything, and their staff, willing though they are, aren't really experts in any field of art or craft.
In Singapore, where I took this photo, not only do they have great shops like this groaning with customers, but that have superb bookstores too. And most of the books are expensive - imported from the UK or USA, with all the shipping and import costs that that implies. And both the art shops and the bookshops are full of punters.
I think the difference is that Amazon is not active in Singapore. Sure, so desperate are Amazon to sell in Singapore that they offer free shipping from the USA, but stuff has not been devalued there as much as here. And so people still use and value their local retailers.
If art and craft is to continue to flourish, we need somewhere to buy our stuff. Support your local store, pretend Amazon isn't there, and keep working!
