The GCA’s Sharon Little has been busy flying the flag for greeting cards in Craft Business magazine – the leading trade title for the crafting industry.
The crafting market is worth an estimated £3.4 billion to the UK economy and the research indicates that 69% of British females in the UK participated in at least one craft in the last 12 months – that’s 18.3 million women. The biggest growth in the craft market has been at the younger end, where 73% of 16-34 year olds have participated in a craft in the last 12 months.
Card making remains one of the top craft pastimes, so it was a great coup for Sharon Little, the ceo of the GCA, to secure coverage in two recent issues of Craft Business magazine inspiring the nation’s amateur card makers to get crafty.
In one recent issue, Sharon joined a panel of trendsetters in talking about trends in various sectors of the crafting industry and in the March/April issue she comments on the growth of the greeting card industry, again picking out some major trends.
“It’s a great piece of exposure for the industry in terms of trends in design and finishes but also covers lots of people in the industry,” says Sharon. “Greeting cards are an incredibly important creative industry in the UK. And, in addition to our £1.7b spend, we’ve got all the crafting people making their cards, so just think how many cards are being sent!”
GCA teaching resource downloaded over 1000 times
In other GCA news, Hurrah for Ra, a teaching resource for Key Stage 2 children developed by the GCA has been downloaded 1,022 times. It’s a great milestone, meaning that potentially over 1,000 classrooms throughout the UK are using the resource.
Hurrah for Ra is a ‘Thank you’ card-making project dedicated to the Egyptian sun god, Ra. Children learn about paper-making, the origins of writing and about Ancient Egyptian culture, expressed through the art and artefacts discovered in King Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Hurrah for Ra comprises three one-hour lessons in total starting with a session on Ancient Egyptian history, 2D stylised art and paper-making, which sets up the historical context and a paper making project. There are four options provided for papermaking depending on the amount of time the teacher wishes to devote to this and then the final lesson covers Egyptian hieroglyphs and a card-making project.
The plan is fully mapped into Key Stage 2 syllabuses for art and design, design technology, history and geography subjects with full National Curriculum references, teacher notes and resources included.
Find out more information on Hurrah for Ra here
