Crafts as an Identity Builder
Keywords:
crafts, hobby, skills, identityAbstract
This article will describe the importance crafts can have on building a personal identity. lt is based on related Finnish research, press material and knowledge that I have acquired personally while working in the Finnish Crafts Organization as a researcher and craftsperson. I am convinced that crafts bring people together and provide an excellent means for building and developing an identity. Crafts also serve several other important economic and cultural functions, such as the implementation of the principle of continuous development, and enhance people's ability to function in everyday situations. I shall however exclude these important dimensions from this discussion; in this article crafts refers to a production process perfomed by hand or with manually-operated tools, as well as the work produced in this fashion.
