What is craft? It certainly isn’t “art” in the pure sense, because its products are meant to be used, as with pottery or bags.isn’t design either; there’s rarely a commercial or mass-made dimension to craft.

This problem of definition has lead to an identity crisis. Craft is seen as the poor cousin of the creative disciplines — the loopy aunt in the hand-woven shoes and earrings made from pipe cleaners.Scotland’s craft community, however, has set about fashioning a new image to remove craft from the realm of gift-shop nick-nacks. No more will it be dismissed as free expression with offcuts of corduroy.

“It’s quite a reputation to work against, that your business is outdated, fuddy-duddy, crafty,” says Julia Douglas, a textiles and ceramics designer based in Edinburgh.

“At heart I consider myself a fine artist, but one with a deep interest in the traditional processes used to make things. Being called a craftsperson doesn’t offend me. But I run up frequently against snobbery from the art world, it refuses to accept that craft can be funky and contemporary and conceptual. As far as the art world in which I trained is concerned, craft is just woolly jumpers, full stop.”Hence the new, provocative campaign. It is predictable that a makeover such as this can’t be attempted without a soupcon of sizzle. The raciness lies in its title: The C Word. Reminiscent of the FCUK advertising blitz by the French Connection clothing chain, it’s a declaration of Year Zero for Scottish crafts.

Emma Walker is the chief executive of Craft Scotland, the body that’s attempting to stitch together the discipline’s future. She recalls that when she assumed the position she was almost instantly fatigued by the debate over what craft actually was — a debate, she says, that has been rumbling on for more than half a century. Was craft merely a glorified form of domestic make-do-and-mend? Or was it a venerable grassroots movement with artisanal credentials?“Then I came across some research from a few years back where craft makers were emphasising the point that they had to forget the C-word,” she says. “That struck me as terribly sad and ridiculous. So we took it and turned it round. There was some resistance to using it as the name of the campaign, they were nervous about something so risque.”

You don’t get the sense that the Glasgow Craft Mafia (GCM) would mind much. Taking their cue from a network of similar groups in America, the GCM represents a younger, more lateral approach to the discipline, embedding it within a portfolio that takes in pop culture, feminism, environmentalism and kitsch. It includes Ding Dong Designs, makers of handknitted effigies of The Beatles, David Bowie, Morrissey and Madness, and Pumpkinsputnik, producers of handmade notebooks.Craft Scotland was previously a department of the Scottish Arts Council, doing what little it could to keep the knitting needles clacking at the 1,300 or so craft-related businesses that operate here. Last year, however, it went solo, adopting charitable status and appointing Walker along with several other staff members. The C Word is their first big move, a three-year mission to reclaim Scottish craft, showing it as a cottage industry in goods that are bespoke but affordable.A cinema commercial for Scottish craft willscreen next month, ahead of C Word launch events in London and Manchester. There will be a national press PR campaign and a separate C Word initiative in the Highlands and islands in November, around the time that Future Focus, a comprehensive survey of the craft industry, is published by the SAC. The American launch is next month in Minneapolis.

Next year, meanwhile, sees an exhibition titled Meet Your Maker at the National Museum of Scotland in which craft designers will appear as living exhibits.

“America is by far the biggest market for contemporary Scottish crafts,” says Walker. “We don’t really appreciate the fact that it sells as steadily as golf or whisky. So we’re hoping to convince the producers to have the Sex and the City cast wearing Scottish crafts and to let us wallpaper Samantha’s apartment in the film.”Another Scottish craft product, albeit with a lobby and a set of difficulties of its own, is Harris Tweed, whose makers announced last week that they would seek to de-emphasise the fabric’s nationality in the wake of the al-Megrahi controversy. Will Craft Scotland consider following suit?

“Absolutely not,” snaps Walker. “We will always push the true origins of the products.will never move away from the Scottish aspect of this.”

Handmade Heaven, a Glasgow Craft Mafia fair, Mono, King Street, Glasgow, Sunday October 25.

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