The Rise of Handmade Creativity in an AI-Driven World

By Reilly Blum, former VAWAA team member

Just last night, my friend and I were talking about AI. 

“I used to think about whether or not I’d let my kids get a cellphone,” she told me. “But now, I’m realizing that’s not the issue anymore. The real question is whether they’ll be able to write.”

She raises a good point. Literacy can be a subtle and nebulous thing, and right now it seems like ChatGPT is doing a lot of the heavy-lifting. My condolences to the teachers out there.

But me? I'm glad I can write. I’m writing this blog post at my desk. It’s a handmade cherry wood secretary desk, about a hundred years old, that once belonged to my great-grandmother. It was given to me as a gift when I was about 7 or 8 years old, and I’ve used it ever since. 

ChatGPT might be able to generate an outline for this blog post (it didn’t, by the way), but it can’t make my grandma’s desk. I flatter myself to think that it will never be able to do that. 

In my two years at VAWAA, I experienced firsthand many of the changes AI is bringing to the working world. It’s entirely reasonable to assume that many communications-centric roles will need to embrace higher and higher levels of AI integration or face obsoletion as the technology continues to improve. The unhappy byproduct of this is that many critical thinking and communications skills seem less overtly essential. So where does that leave the writers of the world?

I don’t have an answer for that question. But what I can speak on is where it leaves the craftspeople. A natural consequence of technological ubiquity is that goods which cannot be produced by machines, like crocheted textiles, a hand-cut dovetail joint, or a hand-built secretary desk, will be increasingly valued culturally, as reminders of the skills that separate us from machines. 

Across disciplines, we are seeing renewed interest in craft, both at community and societal levels. I believe we’re also at a rare point where the type and nature of employment that’s most lucrative is shifting. So, while many creatives may despair at ChatGPT-led encroachment of their territories, I think it becomes, paradoxically, a time when the artisans and craftspeople who work with physical materials will find themselves recentered in society. In other words, it might be a great time to be a pastry chef or a butcher. As our working lives become increasingly isolated and metered by technology, people will likely seek out more intentional opportunities to ground themselves and find community in their private lives. 

In the coming years, I believe tradespeople and craftsmen who obtain a high level of material specialization will benefit from an inelastic demand for their skills. No matter how advanced ChatGPT becomes, we will always need plumbers, welders, electricians, carpenters, and mechanics. White collar careers are likely the ones that will face the most severe adjustments from technological advancement. And while manufacturing, too, becomes ever more globalized, mechanized, and complex, the demand for bespoke, community-level specialists will remain. 

No matter your stance on AI, we live in a material world filled with material things. ChatGPT can give you advice but it can’t replace your car’s transmission. And while many manufactured substitutes replace objects like dishware or sweaters that were traditionally handmade, I think we’ll soon find ourselves returning to humanmade things with newfound appreciation, viewing them as a foil to our technologically optimized lives. Today, many bespoke, handmade products are viewed as luxury goods. In the future, they may be seen as essential investments. As the quality of fast fashion and other mass-produced goods continues to decrease amidst environmental and ethical concerns, I think we’ll begin to restructure the way we consume, prioritizing quality and sustainability over convenience. These principles are the reasons why I continue to use my historic secretary desk. Besides, there’s a comfort to it, and it's made of real wood. Nobody else in the world but me has this desk.

VAWAA brings an interesting point of view to this conversation. At a high level, the organizational mission is to uplift the craftspeople whose work remains tied to our material world. Part of this is ensuring that historic and Indigenous knowledge is preserved, especially in areas where mass-produced reproductions are replacing historic techniques. Another part of this is providing opportunities to people who are seeking greater engagement with materials and craft in their lives. Artisanal skills were once a visible part of daily life, and by embarking on a VAWAA, you give yourself the opportunity to relearn and recenter material intelligence and fluency, learning new skills that you can then bring home and continue to practice.

But behind the scenes, VAWAA has a unique relationship to AI and technology. These are the things you need to embrace if you want to develop a sustainable business, and the VAWAA team is always seeking new ways to automate administrative work, so that time can be used more intentionally. That’s typical of many young companies seeking growth. But working at VAWAA means you also need to understand how a craftsman thinks. 

My role on the Creative Team pulled from a breadth of skills and required the unique type of problem-solving I learned in design school. That may be a natural part of working in a small, mission-led environment. But what I found through my time at VAWAA is that the philosophy behind many of my tactile skills like woodworking and sewing translated naturally to my role, even when the vast majority of my day-to-day work was conducted through a screen. 

Below, I’m sharing a few of my learnings from my time at VAWAA. These may be useful not only to new VAWAA team members, but also for anyone working with an early-stage business or considering the impact of craft in an increasingly online working world.

Focus on the big picture, even when you’re stuck in the weeds. 

When you’re making a chair by hand, each individual mortise and tenon joint seems monumental. One mistake on one tiny connection point can throw the whole piece out of balance. In the same way, when working on a small team within a role that morphs depending on the projects at hand, it can be easy to get caught up in the small, day-to-day administrative tasks. It’s important to distinguish and resolve isolated issues without losing sight of the larger mission guiding your work. While there’s always value in establishing a routine, this cadence can make it easy to lose sight of what it’s all about. Painters know the value in taking a few steps back to look at their piece at large. Similarly, sometimes viewing an artist’s VAWAA page like an outsider can offer insights that you might overlook when caught up in the weeds of editing and rewriting. In other words, try to find a balance between the details and the birds-eye view, and actively seek to develop an agility that allows you to move between the big picture and more granular elements of your work with ease.

Embrace Automation.

Whether you like it or not, AI is here to stay. Stay nimble and experiment with new ways to integrate automation and AI into your work to save yourself time. In tandem, keep a critical eye to make sure that AI doesn’t reduce the quality of your output. When you integrate AI into your work flow, you will free up time to take on more engaging, collaborative projects that require design thinking or have the capacity to expand your responsibilities. An example: last spring, I integrated some new automations into the processes I used to launch artists weekly on the VAWAA site. This allowed me to engage with our quarterly projects at a higher capacity, offering hand-drawn wireframe designs and participating in development-focused discussions. The type of work was more fulfilling than the administrative tasks that technology replaced, and was a better learning experience for me, too.

Study up on the world.

VAWAA collaborates with artists from over 42 countries. With time, you may notice patterns in the communication styles from different cultures, but a bit of research on the front end can go a long way when cold outreaching artists. You’ll also find it useful to keep tabs on the seasonal and religious holidays, current events, and weather patterns in different parts of the world and plan your outreaches accordingly. Gaining fluency with different time zones is hugely helpful, too.

Change is inevitable, and AI may cause just as many problems as it solves. Some of our fears about the technology will never come to fruition, but others that we didn’t anticipate may prove unwieldy. My prediction and hope is that amidst all of these changes, craft will be a grounding element that keeps us connected to others and ourselves. As we seek to distinguish our work and lives from the potential of technology, handmade goods will remain an indelible cornerstone of human heritage and a glue that connects us to one another. No matter what happens in the coming years, VAWAA is a part of that glue.

Written by Reilly Blum

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