They are the first digital natives, the generation that grew up when technology reached into every part of our lives. So they are at home working with computers, right? Not so. At least not for those in the vanguard of a hipster counterculture who would rather work with their hands.
Artisans rediscovering crafts, entrepreneurs who create tangible products and baristas who turn a conventional job into performance art are part of a “maker movement” that seeks to regain control from technology.
Benedict Dellot, a researcher at the Royal Society of Arts, examined the rise of “maker spaces”, workshops where young people design jewellery, pottery and hand-made products and linked this to the growth of hipster coffee and barber shops in places such as Broadway Market in Hackney, east London.
“What we came to realise was, perhaps there is something deeper at play here, which is people making to have a better handle on technology and objects, which they have lost touch with,” he said. “The thing about a lot of service jobs is you can’t see the impact of what you are doing.”
A similar trend has been charted in America by a sociologist, Richard Ocejo, who has described how some young, middle-class men have shunned white-collar jobs in New York to reinvent traditional manual trades in a reaction against the digital economy. His book, Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy, looks at hipster graduates who turn such jobs into an art form by working in craft breweries, cocktail bars and barber shops where they combine work with their hands with an element of performance.
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Similar instincts inspired Tom Cridland, 26, who started a fashion business after reading modern languages at Bristol University. He said: “When so many of us are spending too much time on our phones and in front of screens it is nice to just be doing something with your hands.”
Josh Turner, 26, who lives in Manchester, started a social enterprise making multicoloured socks, Stand4Socks, after studying business management at Birmingham University. “I was actually working on a tech idea and got fed up with the tech side being too complicated, the money needed and a lot of rubbish people were talking. I wanted to just do something tangible,” he said. “I earn far less and work far harder but I enjoy it far more.”
It is not just an urban phenomenon. The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, which stages an exhibition every two years of metalwork, ceramics and furniture by graduates from southwest universities, has seen a similar trend. Anna Trussler, its marketing officer, said: “They do seem to be turning away from the gadgetry, the 3D printers, and the CNC routers [computer-controlled cutting machines], and going back to more traditional tools of the trade.”