Page 280 - Constructing Craft

Affiliated Membership

The difficulty of involving the key craft organisations and their individual members

continued throughout the 1980s. In 1984, Howard Williams, a potter and craft writer,

attempted to appraise why craftspeople were not joining the CCNZ. He maintained
that the CCNZ should have the support of the whole gamut of craftspeople and

others who made up the craft world and produced an extensive list of people he
believed inhabited the craft world:

Those working full time at a craft and earning their livelihood,
those working part time supplementing an income, those who
are interested hobbyists, those teaching crafts, those who are
non-crafts-practising members of the public, those supporting
and promoting crafts including individual craft societies, local
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craft groups, schools, suppliers business houses, galleries.

Williams’ list was extensive, but central to his submission was the notion that
communication lay at the heart of good organisational structure. He believed that

with fewer than 1,500 members – he felt the number should be more like 40,000 –
the CCNZ was not gaining the support it needed and added: ‘It is not, overall, doing

its job, despite its government funding ... Many craftspeople do not want to have

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anything to do with it’. Williams was convinced that the problem was related to the
number of organisations a craftsperson could belong to. Using his own case as an

example, he pointed out that, as a potter, because he belonged to the Auckland

Society of Potters (ASP), with over 400 members, the NZSP with approximately 800
members and was a subscriber to the New Zealand Potter with about 6,000 readers

he could obtain almost all the information he needed to pursue his craft. He stated
that when the CCNZ selected exhibitions for overseas the relevant craft

organisations were ignored. He was expanding on the concerns that Turner had
expressed in 1978. However, he still believed there was a place for the CCNZ.

Williams’ solution was to abolish direct membership. He believed that when
discussion of pottery, for instance, took place around the Board table there should be

a representative of the NZSP there. Williams did not detail how organisations such
as the NZSWWS might be encouraged to take part and in this respect his

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