CraftNOW’s Annual Report

At the end of each year, CraftNOW drafts an annual report summarizing its activities, contributors, and upcoming goals. 

In our most recent edition, CraftNOW Philadelphia begins by describing how the organization entered 2021 optimistically and with ambition while staying mindful of the many challenges faced in 2020 and continued uncertainties caused by the ongoing pandemic. Two new streams of programming were informed by the 2020 research conducted through the University of Pennsylvania’s Integrated Product Design Master’s level course and our Craft Business Survey led by Andrew Dahlgren and Heather Holiday.

Increasing our activities in youth education and economic development stand to have long-term Environmental Effects, our thematic approach for the year named by our Programming Committee early in 2021. This theme was applied to our CraftMONTH activities in November, which examined how communities and interiors shape our experiences when sustainability issues are expressed through craft, and the greater impact of our contemporary material culture.

Left Image: Map of Philadelphia generated by Chris Park, Graphic Information Systems Coordinator for Philadelphia’s Department of Parks and Recreation, to illustrate the nearly 120 summer camp sites CraftNOW reached in 2021.