Craft practice has experienced a sharp rise in popularity since the late 2000s, partly through the ‘aura of the analogue’ and the desire for authentic, handmade products in an increasingly fast paced, digitalised world (Luckman, 2015) but also because of digital platforms such as Etsy and social media enabling ‘anyone’ to become a craft entrepreneur. This book brings together historical, policy and individual narratives to inform a broad understanding of craft entrepreneurship. Drawing on case studies from around the world, Craft Entrepreneurship considers questions of identity, community, and the digital in craft entrepreneurship. In doing so, it finds craft activities to be positioned between or across the arts, heritage, notions of a bohemian lifestyle and the challenges of micro-entrepreneurship. By engaging with the contradictions and fragility of sustaining a craft practice, the chapters in this book contribute to different perspectives for entrepreneurship studies. The contributions to this volume illustrate the craft entrepreneurs’ identity, motivation and sense of creative purpose through their craft, as these collide with the tensions brought about through entrepreneurship.

What is the craft worker's experience of the challenges and opportunities afforded through entrepreneurship? This book reveals the individual experience of craft entrepreneurship, drawing on case studies from around the world, considering questions of identity, policy, community, and the digital in crafting a life. Craft practice has experienced a sharp rise in popularity since the late 2000s as demand and interest for authentic handmade products has increased in a fast paced, digitalised world. Etsy and social media platforms allow seemingly 'anyone' to become a craft entrepreneur. As part of the creative economy and regional cultural policy initiatives, craft and artisanal practices are encouraged by governments. But

What is expertise? In the arts, or cultural work, the experts in this area are commonly regarded to be art critics, dealers or intermediaries. Why are they considered experts? What about the expertise of the artists or cultural workers themselves? This book provides a much-needed account of the concept of expertise in cultural work, providing new insights into the individual experiences of cultural workers and the role of social media in their creative practice and development of expertise. It also explores the potential reasons for inequalities in the sector which centre not only on protected characteristics such as class, gender and race, but increasingly the digital divide. Drawing on interviews with cultural workers and an innovative social media analysis, this book highlights the characteristics of aesthetic expertise in production - the practical skills cultural workers hone and deploy over years of training and creative practice. This is a new take on aesthetic expertise, which is traditionally associated with those involved in the judgement of culture, such as critics, dealers and intermediaries. The book highlights how social media platforms both enable and constrain the development of practical aesthetic expertise, and the platforms' role in the mediation of the cultural object online. Finally, the book interrogates the power dimensions of expertise, focusing primarily on gender. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, it explores how opportunities to develop aesthetic expertise, and the ability to use social media platforms to signal that expertise, are not available to everyone. In this sense, the book adds new perspectives to the growing body of work on inequalities in the creative and cultural industries, as well as scholarship on social media and creative work. The book concludes with the argument that the term 'expertise' needs to be problematised and reclaimed by those who are not equally represented in the cultural industries, using gender as a case in point.