New Craft Artists in Action // NCAA NET WORKS

WHAT IS THE NCAA?
The New Craft Artists in Action are an international artist collective with open membership andhome-court representation in Boston, MA. Through exhibitions, workshops, community projects, and publication they work to integrate the skills, materials, and histories of many intersecting disciplines: athletics, craft, public space aesthetics, labor, recreation, and feminism. NCAA projects combine the discipline, sportsmxnship and physicality of athletics with the focus, dexterity and creativity of craft. This unlikely marriage is meant to encourage participation over spectatorship, and to reassess the traditional cultural and socio-economic contexts in which these activities evolved. Building upon DIY skill-sharing models, the collective creates dynamic learning environments and bodies of work that may call upon knitting, crochet, bookbinding, screen printing, building, action photography, ball handling, etc. The NCAA believes these programs should be both critical and fun, inciting the tactile and tactical liberation of recreation. 
NET WORKS // LEARN TO CRAFT HAND-MADE NETS FOR EMPTY HOOPS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD 
Their most notable project Net Works - by which vibrant hand-made basketball nets are crafted for empty basketball hoops - employs creative problem solving to call attention to neglected public spaces. They also encourage positive relationships between athletes, artists and neighbors. Learn more about Net Works below and peruse this blog for documentation on Net Works and our many other projects!
Brought to participants via traveling workshops, pick up games and internet cataloguing, the NCAA is a craftivist project that addresses public space, diversity, collaboration, feminism, and interdisciplinary learning. The collective assembles hand-made basketball nets for abandoned hoops, usually via knit and crochet, to build proactive inclusive relationships between artists, athletes, and neighbors. Here the form and function of the “street” and the “domestic” collide in hand-made tactical aesthetics that express dissidence and generate new approaches to public space.
Basketball has slowly evolved since 1891, when James Naismith posed a recycled peach basket as the first hoop for his students in Springfield, MA. Woven nets emerged several years later, introducing a new dimension for movement and audio-kinetic satisfaction. Inspired by the many ways nets benefit the game, NCAA Net Works proceeds by a mapping process and a form of DIY slow production that utilize creative problem solving in under-maintained urban spaces. The project draws attention to the expressive potential of these spaces while challenging commercially driven professional athletic institutions.
We encourage you to initiate Net Works in your city or participate by uploading images of lacking courts that you see around town. Click the map below to contribute!
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