Crafts in West Cork

Loads going on in the crafts sector in West Cork these days.... West Cork Leader's Fuschia Brands group is doing Showcase for the second year running - at Dublin's RDS in January 2008 - last year, seven of us shared a stand in the newcomers' hall, which is great for retailers to check out what's new in crafts. Of the seven, four won Index 50 awards! My own work - a new range of porcelain paper clay giftware in small boxes was taken up by Kilkenny Design:

Fuschia Brands is also taking a group stand at the Cork City Hall Christmas Fair - which runs from 13-16th December (check out http://www.nationalcraftsfair.ie/)

Cork Art & Design, the organisation representing crafts people in Cork County, is trying desperately to raise funds for the employment of a professional crafts officer to manage a range of projects. This funding looked 'on the cards' this year from the Enterprise Boards, but has since evapourated. Meanwhile, Cork County Council is backing CAD's proposal to hold a large crafts exhibition at County Hall in March 2008. I stepped down as Chairman of CAD this week after two years in the role. This was partly because of frustration over the ongoing failure of support agencies to work together to support the sector, and partly because I'm so involved in other committees.....

Kinsale Arts Week Board met last week to start planning the 2008 festival (july 12-20th), and this promises to be the best year yet - top quality, cutting edge, community focussed and much more..... the programme will be posted to the KAW website in about April.

In January I helped to set up (and of course got volunteered to become Chairman of) West Cork Calling - a tourist business co-operative for small and medium sized tourist businesses in West Cork. In May, we launched publicly:

With 36 member companies to date, we have developed our website and a brochure and we're ready to start taking bookings for bespoke holidays. What has this to do with crafts? Well, of the CAD members in Cork County, 14 have studios open to the public and ready to take bus tours. Soon we'll have a bus tour organised which picks up at several hotels in the county and takes in some of these studios and galleries.

Hands on is going through a 'quiet phase' since we haven't much money this year, but we did organise a fun 'open day' event at Kinsale Pottery during the arts festival and we are going to repeat this at the Skibereen Food and Craft Festival which is on September 22nd: