The ceramicist and author Edmund de Waal has added his name to the growing list of supporters campaigning against the proposed closure of Falmouth University’s long-standing Contemporary Crafts degree course.
The Save Our Crafts campaign was set up by Falmouth University PhD researcher Matt Tyas in November last year when the university announced there would be no new intake to the course for 2015, citing running costs, changing employment trends and a fall in applicants to crafts courses nationally as reasons for the closure.
A petition has since garnered over 7,000 signatures from students, alumni, academics, craftspeople and regional businesses who all oppose the closure, saying the course is ‘vital to the Cornish economy and its creative culture’.
The campaign refutes claims of a fall in applications to craft courses nationwide and of low graduate-level employability rates, stating that in 2014 Falmouth University accepted 42 applications for the course against a target of 30, and pointing to a recent Crafts Council report which says that craft contributes £3.4 billion to the national economy.
De Waal was also instrumental in the launch of the Crafts Council’s recent publication, Our Future is in the Making: An Education Manifesto for Craft and Making, which sets out a programme of action for the next parliament following the May 2015 general election.
In November he delivered a speech to over 100 guests at a House of Commons launch event for the manifesto, and described how craft offers people the ability “to work with their own, on their own, with their own head, and even better with their own hands and make something that will last beyond them”.
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Anger and dismay at closure of contemporary crafts course
