My hat is off to these radical subversive Australian crafters!

How rad is this? A group of Australian crafters is sick of cutesy crafts for the masses and have decided to protest. I just had to look up flog as slang because to me flog means hit something a bunch of times with a whip but to the Australians or British it means sell. Heh. Please! stop hitting that plush bunny, what did it ever do to you?!

Check out the Melborne Craft Cartel website.

Small-time crafters flock to an inner-Melburn location to flog their wares.

TOMORROW 5-7pm rain or shine we’ll have it covered
Meet at corner Swanston & Little Collins for further instructions

we’ll be joining the group protesting the re-introduction of cars onto Swanston st then heading nearby for a flogging.

Exorbitant retail rental costs have pretty much pushed small-time arts & crafters out of the market. Which is why you see so much cutesy craft crap around town – if it’s not easily palatable it’s not going to sell in high enough volumes to pay display costs. Crafters who might want to be experimental, subversive or political with their work are forced to produce benign and boring stuff just to cover costs.

Here at Craft Cartel we pride ourselves on providing a platform for all crafts, especially the virtually un-sellable. I don’t care if no-one buys my pro-abortion maternity-wear, dammit, I’m not interested in making anything so sweet that even Rudd wouldn’t call it revolting. It’s tricky for us to set up these markets legally though ’cause council permits are so steep (& I imagine things are only going to get trickier with our new nong-head lord mayor).

So. We’ve decided to bi-pass the legal bit & just do it anyway.

We’re calling for crafters to gather en-mass at an as-yet-undisclosed inner-city Melburn location on Tuesday 9th Dec at 5pm. where make-shift tables will be erected for flogging of wares.

Hopefully we won’t get hassled too much, it is just craft, after all – & if you’re going to get in trouble you may as well make it for something important : for knitting and glitter and glue.

We’ll be disclosing the exact location to sellers closer to the day & then will be spreading the word via texts & flyers & shouting & waving.

Strength in numbers so come along & support local crafters: if you have stuff to sell bring it along – drop us a line if you can so we have a vague idea of numbers.

Show your support by joining their facebook group!