An open invitation to changemakers, educators, conscious consumers, and anyone interested in the creative economy to lean into this grassroots global community and help drive systems change.

We live in an age where every convenience is a finger tap away, but historically marginalized communities and ecosystems are paying the price of unconscious consumption. Our current economic practices contribute to environmental damage, social injustice, and declining public trust. The solution, argues Stacey Edgar, social entrepreneur and executive director of the International Folk Art Market, is the artisan economy. In contrast to the profit-at-all-costs model of the mainstream economy, the artisan approach to production and consumption encourages creativity, preserves culture, and cultivates connection.

In Artisan Economics, Edgar proposes a shift toward this artisan-centric model that prioritizes creativity, dignity, and community. Drawing on stories and research from around the world, she outlines eight core principles of the artisan economy—purpose, creativity, dignity, resistance, community, value, sustainability, and shared prosperity. She also shares a framework, called the Taproot Model of Systems Change, on which to enact these principles by restoring a vision of the economy as a living system. Ultimately, Edgar proposes, the artisan economy is a way to reconnect consumers with makers, foster sustainable growth, and create a more equitable and human-focused global economy.

To create true connections across our global economy, we need a dramatic overhaul of what it means to work and what it means to consume.

About The Author

Stacey Edgar, PhD, is an award-winning social entrepreneur, educator, and researcher who is the executive director of the International Folk Art Market—the largest juried folk art market in the world that attracts tens of thousands of visitors and volunteers every summer. She earned her PhD in social work from Colorado State University and teaches inclusive leadership in their executive MBA program at the Leeds School of Business. For nearly two decades, she was the founder and leader of Global Girlfriend, a multimillion-dollar fair-trade enterprise that worked with hundreds of women-led artisan groups in forty countries.