Madeleine Boyd

Individual craftspeople are at the heart of keeping traditional crafts alive and preserving knowledge to be passed to the next generation.

The Lost Arts is a collection of interviews with a few craftspeople who are currently active in their field. Going beyond the craft to learn about the person, their experiences, stories, highlights, and advice it seeks to put forward who the people are that have dedicated their careers to pursuing a particular craft and what drives them to continue what they have done for – between everyone included – decades worth of time and energy.

Readers are invited to explore the stories behind crafts that they may have encountered, been curious about, or never considered to be alive today at all. Knowing that though they may be considered endangered, there are people who persist in learning, using, and sharing these traditional skills.

This project documents and celebrates the history of global participation in the Summer Olympics from Paris 1924 to the present day, in the lead up to the event returning to Paris in 2024.

Visualising each nation’s participation in the event highlights the unique history and relationship each one has with the games, while inviting viewers to put together smaller narratives and spot patterns across the 206 blooms used to denote each nation that is currently active. Variations point to smaller categorisations within the larger group and have been selected in order to allow a viewer to compare and question the similarities or differences.

Despite being a politicised event throughout the last century and many of the conclusions shown in this project being indicative of tensions, the event itself honours dedication to a wide range of sporting disciplines and sportsmanship and brings together people who otherwise may have never crossed paths, building friendships independently of overarching global relations.