Page 157 - Constructing Craft

Conference in Palmerston North in March 1988 responded to a debate about

professional attitudes and skills in the management and marketing of craftspeople
and their products by suggesting that students should be banned from selling their
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work in the first two years of the course. This may have been an attempt to ensure
that ‘standards’ were protected but there may have also been a fear that some

students would see this as a benchmark in their career. To be economic
professionals while tutors were technically economic amateurs had the potential to

upset the student/tutor equilibrium. In the less controlled environment of community

education or clubs, to suggest what students did or did not do with the objects they
produced would have been considered outrageous.

The CCNZ had been unable or unwilling to cater for amateurs, and the
professionals who defined themselves almost exclusively by their ability to sell their

work (old/traditional/economic professionals) may have detected within the
development of formal tertiary training courses a threat to their professional status.

The growing craft education sector would have to find qualified teachers – would
they redefine professionalism? Furthermore, it seemed likely, since New Zealand

had no professionally qualified craft educators, that the tutors might have to come

from elsewhere and possibly introduce new interpretations of professionalism. In
1988 Edith Ryan noted: ‘It is not just by chance that Arts Council funding to craft art

was significantly increased last year. Professional qualifications lend respectability
and win recognition.’ She added:

Teaching … is a professional business, and Council believes, in
concert with the Education Department and Crafts Council of
New Zealand, that tutors need some specialised input to be
professionally effective. Plans are afoot to bring overseas
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experts to provide this essential edge.

Ryan’s article signalled that tertiary accreditation increased the cultural and

symbolic capital of craft and implied that it might overcome the difficulties some
graduates had earning a living. Furthermore, she was indicating that this form of

capital was more likely to be found elsewhere. One option was to recruit tutors from

overseas. Another was for craftspeople seeking professional status to study
overseas.

Constructing Craft