Over the past 10 years, the concept of cultural appropriation has become part of our regular vocabulary in the crafts industry. It’s a complex subject with many nuances. Let’s look at the concept and provide ideas for businesses to move forward with.
Making your business accessible means offering equal access to everyone, including people with disabilities. In the process, everyone benefits. Join us for this session with accessibility consultant and knitwear designer Renee Van Hoy.
Creative professionals who make videos may need captions or transcriptions and perhaps a teleprompter to say the right words during the filming process. Here are the top apps you can use to create these video elements in an instant.
In this webinar taught by Queenie Johnson, you’ll learn how to incorporate anti-racist content into your social media and business messaging, and when and how to post with confidence. This session is designed for white and BIPOC business owners, creators, and crafters who want to be change agents for equity.
Over the past year, there have been many conversations centered on change through diversity, equity, and inclusion, and social justice. This increased focus has given forward-thinking businesses the mandate to develop a brand strategy that addresses the diverse and evolving customer needs and expectations. One important starting point is drafting a diversity and inclusion statement for your website.
African wax prints are fabrics with a complex and nuanced history and, although they’re trending on the fashion runways, some consumers question whether wearing these garments is cultural appropriation.
In this interactive webinar executive coach and Craft Industry Alliance member Lauren Lambrecht will help you define what inclusive leadership looks like and identify areas in which inclusivity shows up in business.
A new “15 Percent Pledge” calls for major retailers to pledge 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses. Will craft industry retailers take action?
Curious about ADA requirements for business websites? An increasing number of plaintiffs are filing claims for damages against businesses, alleging that their websites aren’t accessible to all. Take your first steps at making your digital presence compliant with the ADA.
Swatched is a new documentary series featuring knitwear and crochet designers. The pilot features designer Andrea Tong. The project’s goal is to showcase the diversity of stories within the industry.
OLFA has launched a new charitable initiative intended to help support creative endeavors in diverse communities throughout the US. Called OLFA Builds Diversity, the program will gift OLFA cutting solutions to individuals, organizations, classrooms, and training programs that demonstrate a focus on creative and professional skill development for people from diverse backgrounds.
In 2016 Rumana Lasker looked at 52 sewing magazines published in the UK that year and realized that every single one featured a white woman on the cover.
“One of the things that struck me the most…is the feeling of being undervalued- as a consumer, as a person,” says Lasker a British sewer who was a quarter-finalist on the Great British Sewing Bee. “Because it is no exaggeration to say that by failing to represent us, they are telling people of color that we don’t matter.”
Craft fair organizers can take specific steps to make their events accessible to disabled attendees and vendors.
We all want to make the world a more inclusive place, but sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Take this survey to identify what you are doing well and what you can work on.
The craft industry is a perfect microcosm of the larger tensions that are pulsing through our national and global cultures in 2017: racial, social, economic. And corporations everywhere—their advertising choices, their mistakes, and their responses to those mistakes—are often the battlegrounds where those tensions come to the forefront.