Sarah Corbett - Craftivism

On the 29th I visited a lecture held by Sarah Corbett, an activist turned Craftivist.
She explained that she had not come from all too artistic background, but instead had been an activist, she had worked with Oxfam before deciding that the activist realm wasn't for her as it wore her out, she didn't feel like she fitted in with the other activists  She began using cross stitch as a way to relax herself between protesting. In the year of 2008 she stumbled across Craftivism, and contacted the Betsy Greer, the lady who had come up with the term. She had contacted her in the hope that there may be something she could do in this area, but there was nothing. Betsy did however agree she could use the term providing she ran her ideas past her first so she could see it was tasteful. Betsy described Craftivism as Activism being the aim, Craft being the tool.
From there Sarah began applying craft into her activist work and developed a manifesto to work by. "To explore the scandal of global poverty and human rights injustices through the power of craft and public art. This will be done through provocative non-violent creative actions."

She talked of how Craftivism helped her be a more strategic campaigner and that now she particularly felt like a much better lobbyist. She explained how vital it was for her to know what she was talking about, to know the people she was talking to. so that there was an understanding between them.

Sarah Corbett is someone I admire for the work she is doing, on the scale of things it isn't huge, and it doesn't change your life, but its obvious attempts to improve the world around you, in a non threatening way, allowing people to think for themselves and make their own choices, but just hoping maybe that she's influenced them to choose the right one. I also think her approach to how she works is admirable, she makes sure she knows what she's talking about, she wont ask someone to do something she hasn't at least done herself and when talking to politicians she'll take that time to find out things about them, so she knows best how to approach them. By doing this, she's breaking off from the typical virtually non-effective narrow minded activists and showing that not all activism has to be aggressive or violent, and that not all of them can be generalised with those that are just activists for the sake of protesting. Giving activism a good name once more.

@craftivism