ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the new spaces of engagement with cultural heritage configured by maker communities. It reflects on how the results might be used by cultural institutions to engage more meaningfully with their audiences around craft as both heritage and contemporary practice. The chapter explores the contemporary revival of craft in the maker movement, which has helped to reposition the value of craft and foster new means of engaging with and transforming both tangible and intangible forms of cultural heritage. It focuses on online maker communities of knitters, weavers and crocheters, and demonstrates the value of interactions with cultural heritage for the remit of practice, and the wider reverberations of craft activities. The chapter addresses the potential of cultural institutions to offer new modes of engaging with cultural heritage and the knowledge embedded in their collections and archives, contextualised within the wider shifts in museum practice and society.
