Page 163 - Constructing Craft

amateurs been alienated, but also that the CCNZ had been unsuccessful in catering

for the two forms of professionalism that had evolved over the previous decade:
In providing services to the producers [old craft professionals]
and the artist [new craft art professionals], the crafts council
[sic] has failed to differentiate between them, assuming
everyone working in craft materials continually aspires to create
and explore new possibilities within their chosen media. In fact,
many craftspeople operate as small manufacturers, whose
product sells well, and they see no need to aspire to art-
55
orientated pieces which will do no better in the marketplace.

Ultimately the inevitable call for a new membership structure made little difference.
In December 1991 the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council announced it would no

longer fund the CCNZ, purportedly because it no longer thought it appropriate to

support membership organisations. This, and a rapidly deteriorating financial
situation, made the future of the CCNZ impossible. The CCNZ did not have the

resources to continue. It went into liquidation in 1992 owing $150,000. Those with
the most to lose when the CCNZ disappeared were not the amateurs, or even the

traditional professionals who often could still earn a living from their craft and had
their own craft-specific organisations, but the new professionals – those who

needed an organisation that could exclusively promote their enhanced cultural

position that located them somewhere between ‘old craft’ and art.

However, the new professionals were in fact no longer craftspeople – they were

artists. The symbolic violence that had permeated craft education from primary

school through to the tertiary level had influenced who would ultimately be deemed
true professionals. Unfortunately, the new professionals were now competing in a

much bigger field filled with individuals who possessed more cultural and symbolic
capital ‒ the field of art.

Constructing Craft