During a pandemic, when stepping out of your home feels like a risk, it takes searching within it for a source of solace. It’s tempting to seek this reassurance from the blue-light of a screen, indulging in Twitter timelines, refreshing the news pages and monitoring grim statistics. Thanks to our global connectedness, being informed by professionals is easy. But to go further can send us into a spiral of anxiety and angst.
With no office to go to, no exercise class to attend, nothing external to participate in, we can be left with something else that is scary: time alone.
We are being told to stay indoors. To socially distance. But distancing doesn’t have to mean disconnecting. If remoteness becomes an inner feeling as well as a new physical reality, there’s a surefire way to rebalance and reconnect: creativity.
Understandably, there is already a lot of chatter about how to spend this time and, as long as we follow health advice, there is really no right or wrong way—but if you’re twiddling your thumbs, can’t concentrate or feeling overwhelmed, "making something" might be a pretty good one.
Craft as a way to self-soothe is not a new concept. Used in therapy for decades, in more recent years it has tumbled into our lives in colouring book trends, Pinterest fads and buzz words. Cynics may question the effectiveness of these, dismissing them as trivial, but this isn’t just a tedious wellness cliche: according to new research by the BBC and University College London, practising arts and crafts can genuinely alleviate symptoms of anxiety, depression, loneliness and even dementia.
“The underlying beauty of craft is that it does not demand immediate perfection”
What’s more, with major museums such as Tate Modern running craft-related exhibitions and artists working with traditional crafts winning prestigious prizes, crafts have also been re-entering public consciousness in established settings. The "art vs craft" debate, that often treats one as less prestigious than the other, is one becoming less relevant and handcrafted objects themselves are becoming more respected and collectable.
However, the privacy of our homes is where craft truly thrives. With no need for societal validation or prove its importance to anybody, in a world of tapping and swiping, the movement involved in casting off a scarf or pinching clay into a pot can induce a thrill that is wholly familiar: one forgotten but not lost. Lockdown is revealing this within many of us, as we return to old hobbies; drawing or knitting, or activities we did at school. "Mindfulness" and "self-care" may be new words, but in relation to crafts they describe something ancient.
As though in response to this, our modern society well-meaningly encourages side-hustles and hobbies-turned-businesses, which can discourage dabblers. We may not try for the fear we won’t be good enough, or because we do not have professional training or “natural talent.” Instead, it’s worth remembering that craftsmanship has been an ingrained part of our humanity long before certificates and Instagram posts. The underlying beauty of craft is that it does not demand immediate perfection. It is the embodiment of the phrase “these things take time,” granting you permission to try, fail and repeat.
The act of moving our hands to create something physical, viewable, enjoyable can prove to be momentarily life-changing. Completing a row of knitting with no dropped stitches after a whole morning of trying, finally repainting an old dresser, or constructing a collage with a redundant magazine, making new from old, are all small victories that our ordinary day-to-day lives can make us forget we need. These things can alight the same joyous, messy thrill that sticking-and-glueing did in our childhoods and take us back to that slower pace, too. And at times like this, when normality is disrupted, they softly remind us that we are capable, if not of any other achievements at this particular moment sat at our coffee-table-turned-work-bench, but of this one.
Choosing this particular moment to try out an art or craft activity isn’t about using your unexpected time off to resume hyper-productivity—it’s not about replacing your ordinary work-life pressure with a new pressure to produce a masterpiece. It’s simply choosing to return to a tried and tested way of passing time. The hours will go by and you may feel calmer afterward, or at least relieved to have been kept busy. Who knows: that cross-stitch kit you were gifted three Christmases ago could be the answer to finding some moments of peace or positivity in a haze of panic. It may not be destined for walls of Tate Modern, but it could end up on your mantlepiece and right now you may appreciate the latter even more-so.
