It could be called an urge, or a need, and it pesters us. We think we can rid ourselves of it, but before long, it is back, niggling at us. But in a society that values money and prestige, we can’t fathom how such a need as superfluous as this, which has no role in our modern world, has got such a grip on us.
Writer and educator Ellen Dissanayake began a quest to investigate why she, and many women like her, had this inexplicable need to make things. This ‘making’ urge could manifest in sewing, cooking, painting, writing, decorating, fashioning new things from the old, gardening, and so forth. It was a need to get off the computer and the screen, to stop ingesting passive entertainment, and to use…
