Page 146 - Constructing Craft

In the early 1980s the training of craftspeople in both Australia and New Zealand

continued to pursue British and American models and move along the continuum
towards the type of education students of the fine arts were familiar with. By

following the British model the New Zealand craft courses in the 1980s fulfilled the
notion that the well-educated middle-classes would support their economically

dominant position by dominating the craft movement through the education system.
Between 1949 and the 1970s this group’s power lay to some extent in their ability to

sell their work. But by the 1980s this afforded them less symbolic capital. To

maintain their dominant position they needed to gather emulate the art world and
the best way to do this was to have formal qualifications from a legitimising external

authority. Craftspeople would continue to describe themselves as professionals –

but they might have to label themselves either professional educators and have the
appropriate qualifications or professional craft artists which might also demand

formal qualifications. For the new graduates a higher education level matched the
higher expectations of a more culturally aware society and, consequently, afforded

craft design or visual design graduates a higher status.

Paradoxically, an increase in status – from craftsperson to craft artist – had the

potential to make the task of earning an income more difficult for graduates of a new
approach to craft training. If the work of the graduates became more art-like would

they have more difficulty selling it in an already difficult art market?

The Reforms of the 1980s

In New Zealand changes to craft education at the tertiary education level in the
1980s occurred at the same time as the neo-liberal economic agenda began to

emerge after the election of the fourth Labour government in 1984. The changes in
education were linked to the idea that New Zealand needed to ‘upskill’ its workforce

to be competitive in a new global economic environment. As ‘blue-collar’ jobs, which

did not require tertiary education, declined and ‘white-collar’ jobs increased, it
became even more important for those considering a future in craft to gain higher

qualifications to increase the status of their profession within the new ‘creative’
economy. Furthermore, because students were staying at secondary school longer,

views on tertiary education ‒ the need for it and the gains to be derived from it ‒

Constructing Craft