Key Cultural and Economic Event

I picked the Industrial Revolution as the economic event in our timeline. Of course this event is not the only event that had an economic impact in society but when you tend to read the world revolution on the term used to refer to something, it is pretty clear that has a critical change.

The Industrial Revolution did not just had an effect on peoples lifestyle, where most of people left the countryside and moved into cities due to the hight amount of jobs available seeking for better life.

The creation of new jobs leaded to people having enough money to afford more things and therefor increasing the production demand. This also started the creation of a new social class, the middle class.

Screenshot from presentation by Iona, Agatha, Cara, Paige and Llara

The Arts and Craft Movement is one of the events on this timeline that interests me the most from a cultural point of view.

These could just affect to those in a safe economic position as if you were poor you were probably worrying about other things other than how fast the world was changing.

Wall hanging, designed by William Morris, made by Ada Phoebe Godman

The arts and craft movement was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and the mass production that brought with it, which was translated into a lower quality items. The process was no longer enjoyed as you did not need to be an artisan in order to create something and it lost that feeling of uniqueness.

I have chosen this as I think that history tends to repeat and I could see a new movement of artists reacting to the immediate, fast, and constant creation of art by slowing down and produce more craft-made art; film photography is back, candle and soap making, even illustration finish their pieces on a Digital format, lots of them create the base of the piece on a physical canvas.

I am happy that this is coming back as, yes, they way that we live now a days is great because you can eat avocados no matter where you live or the time of the year but is not sustainable. My opinion is that even though is great we should all realise that we are not gods, we are another animal species that lives in a planet and we think we are superior to everything.

Bibliography

Unknown author and date. Arts and Crafts: An Introduction. [online] Available from <https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/arts-and-crafts-an-introduction> [16 Nov 2021]