For a year now, give or take, I’ve been one of the organisers of Brighton Craftaganza. Our main activity is hosting craft markets in a fantastic central-Brighton location where local crafters/designer-makers can sell their wares and promote themselves and their work. Recently we have been venturing into other areas to support the local creative talent. For example, in conjunction with the Handmade Co-op shop, we hosted the recent ‘Sales for People who Hate Selling’ symposium for which we invited a couple of experts trained in the dark arts of sales techniques to share the specific parts of knowledge that could be applicable to a face-to-face sales situation like a craft market.
Although more of an experiment than anything, this event proved a great success and we had some excellent feedback from the crafts people and designer-makers who were in attendance. We have more events like this in the pipe-line, all of which are very exciting, but our main order of business is the craft markets themselves.
Our maiden Brighton Craftaganza craft market happened in March and it was soooo much fun, as well as pretty successful from most of the sellers’ points of view. Due to the popularity of the venue we've been forced to hold fire for much of the rest of this year until availability allows us to hold another. The second Brighton Craftaganza coincides nicely with the festive season and will happen on Saturday 10th December at Fabrica on the corner of Duke Street and Ship Street. If you are lucky (?) enough to live in or be visiting the South of England at that time, you could do worse than pop down to Brighton on that day and pay us a visit. We have already allocated all our stalls to over thirty carefully selected locally based designer-makers. It’ll be a fantastic opportunity to pick up some truly unique hand-crafted Christmas gifts that have been made with love. Craftaganza will provide an oasis of creativity and in a sea of bland high street ubiquity!
When choosing which of the many applicants to offer a stall to, we reminded ourselves of our original manifesto: to represent the spectrum of ‘craft’ and to show that handmade products are just as good as, and most often far better than, their mass-produced equivalents. By ‘spectrum of craft’ I mean everything from the type of products you might expect to see at a traditional craft fair right through to really avant-garde contemporary work and everything in between. I find it really encouraging to see patchwork cushions selling alongside quirky illustrated T-shirts. I love that balance, plus it engenders a supportive and inclusive environment in which to try and sell your handmade products.
The variety of work that we represent is really what sets Brighton Craftaganza aside from the other art and craft markets in this area. The nature of production methods is such that handmade products provide a variety as well as uniqueness that you just can’t find in the high street shops. But to represent this variety in the best possible light, we offer stalls to those creating excellent quality as well as distinctly original work.
With over thirty sellers who will have their work on sale on December 10th, it’s really difficult to pick just a few of them to feature in this post. But these are a selection of what you can expect should you be able to make to the Christmas Craftaganza. Hope to see you there!
1 comment:
It looks AMAZING! Good on you Zoe. I am hoping to be participating in a makers' fair that same weekend, so we could be committing simultaneous craft sales!
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