Festival Director's Message

1 September 2023

Welcome to the 7th annual Sydney Craft Week Festival!

This years festival theme is ‘Time’. Events reflect on this theme: the time it takes makers to make, to learn a skill, to understand materials and to build a practice as well as the timeless quality of handmade work. Makers are patient and dedicated people who spend many years learning their craft to get to that point where they can take creative risks and innovate adding to their brilliance. The slow approach to handmade work is the antithesis of our busy lives in a fast-paced world that sometimes can seem to spin out of control. Making is something that all of us can turn to, to slow down and appreciate time in a different way, a quiet meditative process that soothes the mind and stretches time.

Sydney Craft Week is the first and only festival in Sydney dedicated to making by hand. This year is our 7th birthday with 320+ participating artists and 57 groups in 152+ events across 37 suburbs of Sydney and beyond.

Special thanks to all the participants, our supporters, Festival producer Fiona Pulford and the ADC team, designer Maria Pia Mosquera and to Samee Lapham for her beautiful cover photograph.

Enjoy browsing this guide and the website sydneycraftweek.com. Follow us on social media for craft news all year round.

Take time to appreciate craft, learn something new and support Sydney’s makers.

We hope to see you all at Australian Design Centre – the Sydney Craft Week Festival HQ – during the Festival.

Lisa Cahill
Festival Director

Images (l-r): Lisa Cahill opening Seed Stitch Contemporary Textiles Awards 2020. Photo: Rhiannon Hopley. Turning on the potters wheel at Glost Studios in Dulwich Hill Sydney, 2023. Photo: Samee Lapham.