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n-traditional crafts. The results of the next question, ‘Do you think the government should set aside funding for crafts?’ was surprising too. It revealed that 100% of the people sampled believe that the government should set aside funding for crafts. This is a huge difference compared to the survey carried out by the Arts and Crafts Council in 2010 when only 44% of their participants thought that crafts should be funded(The Craft Yarn Council, 2011, online). This is a really encouraging result as it could indicate a change in people’s opinions of traditional craft and its worth. This could be due to the recent cutbacks within the craft community, the participants could have been affected by the cutbacks and realised that crafts are important and need the funding so that they can be accessed by all. ‘Crafts in the English Countryside: Towards a Future’ by E.J.T. Collins supports the importance of funding craftspeople to keep craft alive by saying, ‘…shows the crafts to be a positive and dynamic force within the rural economy. They play a key role in conserving the historic elements within the built and natural environment. They keep alive traditional skills’ (2004, p.20). This shows along with the results that people are seeing the value of traditional crafts again.

 

The fourth question was, ‘Do you or have you ever knit?’ 9 people said they did whereas 6 people said they had never knit. Therefore 60% of the sample knit or have knitted before, that’s over half the number of participants. This is also supported by the Craft Yarn Council of America whose survey revealed that 53 million people in North America knit today (The Craft Yarn Council, 2011, online). Unfortunately there has not been a similar nationwide survey on whether people knit or not in Great Britain but the results from this small sample gives a rough idea of what the nationwide numbers would be.

 

The knitters were then asked, ‘How did you become interested in knitting?’ The majority of participants said that they were taught in school how to knit. 2 participants said that their mother had taught them how to knit, 2 participants said that their grandmother had showed them how to knit, one person said that they had taught themselves and finally the last person said that they had watched knitting tutorials on the video uploading website YouTube.com and learned to knit that way. Out of the 5 participants that had learnt to knit in school, 1 had chosen a course on it, 1 had learnt it at university and the other 3 were taught to knit at primary school, it could be important to mention the participants that had learnt to knit in primary school were older in age than the rest of the participants. This is because it was part of the curriculum in those days, unlike today where it is very rare to see any traditional crafts on a school curriculum. The knitters that said they had been taught by a family member show how knitting’s publicity is still reliant on people passing down the skill from generation to generation, which is a great social way of getting to learn a new skill but this way of learning to knit does not guarantee that the traditional craft will still be here from years to come. This subject is discussed in E.J.T Collins book ‘Crafts in th本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。