The small is big: Craft in the inner city of Johannesburg

Abstract

With money, we tend to forget that a bigger amount can be nothing but a total of smaller amounts added together, and hence the craft industry is often overlooked in discourses of development. In the course of ‘bigger picture’ discourses, the significance of the ‘particular’ tends to be overshadowed. This article seeks to illuminate the significance of craft production to inner-city regeneration, local economic development, rural–urban development, and socio-economic change by evaluating the effects of a particular craft project known as Beautiful Things, located in the inner city of Johannesburg in South Africa.