Endangered crafts

  indeed some critically endangered crafts appeared in my timeline yesterday. Perhaps it is time to write a reminder to myself (and perhaps you) that these things matter. They matter just as much as trying to save a language only five people still speak. 

Making things with our hands matters, creating things matters. The most interesting people I know are people who make things, create things, design things with all sorts of materials and words.

I remember talking to a speech pathologist once about a group of people I know who use what is sometimes called "augmentative and alternative communication". They use it because, for one reason or another they cannot speak easily - if at all. They use it because their desire to communicate is much, much stronger than their willingness to remain silent. They want to be heard. They have things to say - even if they are just simple things. Being able to create and deliver those messages is so important. It is far more important than the speech pathologist recognised. She was more concerned with feeding and swallowing issues. 

I remember P... who seemed to have a very, very severe problem with drinking at school. He couldn't seem to swallow. He spluttered everywhere. The speech pathologist, the teacher aide and his previous teachers had all tried various ways of doing it. Nothing seemed to work. In summer people were worried about him being dehydrated.

The children were all given "orange juice" to drink. It was an artificial mix of some sort with extra vitamin C - thought to be good for the children. I tried some one day. Ugh! It was very sweet and left a metallic aftertaste in my mouth. 

"Do you like the orange juice P...?" I asked as we were getting ready for lunch.

He looked down quickly...his way of saying "No."

"I don't either," I told him. As I have problems holding things steady I was not sure if I could try giving him some water instead but I did. Okay, some of it went down the front of his t-shirt but most of it went down his throat. We looked at each other in amazement. He grinned. He knew I knew what the problem was then - and what the solution was.

I thought of this incident as I looked at the list of endangered and critically endangered crafts in the <http://themakers.directory/>. It might not seem to matter very much to most people if the art of cricket ball making is extinct in the United Kingdom and Downunder but it matters to cricketers, to the future of cricket, to all the children who will grow up without a real cricket ball. I am reliably told there is a difference between the real thing and the artificial version.  

We need to be able to communicate these things and act on them. I will spend today at the Showground, the first of a number. I will be talking to people who communicate in many ways. I will see many examples of that capacity to communicate through "making" and "creating". Some people, the drinkers of the orange juice perhaps, will communicate by following patterns exactly, perhaps even to the colours used. Other people will use watered down versions and add their own variations to produce something recognisable but different. Yet more people will have designed and made their own. What they produce will be unique but they will still be helping a craft survive. The items they make will go on to inspire still other people.

We need more of this, much more. Human beings need to create, to design, to build. We need to be able to say, "I made this."