ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the focus and premise of the book, ‘craft as a creative industry’. It highlights the gap in scholarship the book is addressing, providing a critical perspective on craft within the context of the creative industries. The chapter includes a short description of each chapter in the book, outlining the key arguments and concepts for each. The section ‘craft as a creative industry’ discusses existing literature on craft which has discussed its tentative position as a creative industry, despite the widespread popularity of craft which only increased after the COVID-19 pandemic. The section provides a brief discussion on ‘creative industries’ as a policy construct in the UK and Australia, the two countries of focus in this book. The final section, ‘Inequalities in the creative industries and craft’, discusses the body of research on inequalities in the wider creative industries, highlighting how relatively little research has been carried out on inequalities in craft, which is the key intervention of this book.
