Escape Magazine #9, Love 146: Craftivist Collective (Russian Translation)

Hi Erin, Sarah here. Thanks for your honest feedback, we are so so grateful for any constructive criticism. I agree with you that no one should have to pay to be part of a movement which is why we have created free instruction videos anyone can watch as well as instruction blogs, press releases and examples people can use if they want to set up their own craftivism event or deliver one of our projects alone. Plus we always encourage people to create their own craftivism projects. However we cannot continue to carry on maintaining this level of commitment on top of full time jobs otherwise we will burn out and be no use to anyone. Also sadly we cannot provide free resources for everyone or in your words work with more people because it costs money to hire venues and pay for equipment, travel etc to be able to provide workshops for people who want to learn craft skills and learn more about craftivism. Alongside our workshops we will continue to offer our free stitch-ins where people can join us for free and stitch their craftivism project with other craftivists but again we cannot afford to continue to buy all resources in to give out for free. If we could afford it, we most definitely would.We are getting in more and more requests to deliver workshops, exhibit in galleries and sell products so people can buy them as gifts for people or themselves and spread the word. We have only started doing the above because there has been a demand for the it and we see the benefits of it to help raise awareness of craftivism, provoke discussions and support people to become craftivists. We are going to be a social enterprise because we do not believe in making profit out of craftivism and we want all profit to go back into the enterprise to deliver some free workshops for particular audiences as well as provide other tools to encourage more people to be craftivists as well as offer more support. I’ve been lucky enough to have had some money in the last two years to pay for the maintenance of the website, flickr, workshops, events and activities but sadly I can no longer continue to do this. We can only grow if we have time and financial support to do so.I hope you understand our predicament and limitations without financial backing and lack of time. If you still feel uncomfortable by the above please do continue to raise your concerns and we can continue to discuss our the reasons behind our decisions taken.Good luck with your craftivism projects!:)All my respect, Sarah x