Keep crafting and carry on: Nostalgia and domestic cultures in the crisis

In this piece, I think through some of the responses to the COVID-19 crisis in British popular culture, particularly the significance of the turn to one of the most prominent domesticity experts in mainstream British television: Kirstie Allsopp. I consider what it is that the nation appears to find particularly comforting about Kirstie as a public figure who emerged in the context of, and formed her domestic goddess celebrity persona through, articulations with austerity culture. I argue that the turn towards a nostalgic domesticity within austerity culture in the United Kingdom has intensified during the COVID-19 crisis, paving the way for more discourses which accept escalating inequalities under the guise of a particular notion of White nostalgic femininity, as well as British blitz spirit, invoking a form of patriotic stoicism and nationalistic sentiment.

Just 4 weeks after the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson initiated a nationwide lockdown, the television network Channel 4 launched Kirstie: Keep Crafting and Carry On in April, a 10-episode series filmed at her second home in Devon. The programme description reads, ‘With the nation in lockdown, queen-of-craft Kirstie Allsopp teaches the nation new crafts and skills that can help navigate these unique times’. In each episode, Kirstie’s mode of address is, as always, direct to the audience and employed to create an illusion of intimacy. She assures viewers that they are in her dining room which has been hastily reconfigured for filming, going so far as to film the production staff on her iPhone. This footage is then integrated into the show in post-production, providing a particular form of intimate access and invoking a sense of authenticity which I argue in my doctoral research is central to the star text of an ‘austerity celebrity’ (Martin, 2020). The programme consists of crafting exercises filmed in this ‘authentic’ socially distanced way, which are interspersed with segments from Kirstie’s other programmes including Kirstie’s Vintage Homes and Kirstie’s Handmade Britain. This firmly situates Keep Crafting and Carry On within Kirstie’s established aesthetic and narrative style, invoking nostalgic discourses and the particular White femininity which she cultivated throughout the recent austerity period.

Kirstie has established herself over a number of years as an expert in domesticity, thrift and crafting, in a move which coincided with the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007/2008 and subsequent recession. As Hannah Hamad (2013) remarks, Kirstie is representative of a particular iteration of celebrity during austerity, ‘whose expertise in areas germane to recessionary priorities is efficaciously harnessed in the production of their personae’ (p. 245). In many ways, Kirstie embodies the thrifty, happy housewife identified across recessionary popular culture (Allen et al., 2015; Bramall, 2013; Jensen, 2012) and it is therefore no surprise her public persona as a crafting enthusiast and domestic goddess has attracted feminist scholarly attention (Bain, 2016; Bramall, 2013; Charlesworth, 2014; Dirix, 2014; Hall and Jayne, 2016; Hamad, 2013; Philips, 2016).

It is clear from my own analysis of over 54 hours of Kirstie’s television programmes (Martin, 2020) that, as an austerity celebrity, she demonstrates a particular maternal femininity that has been identified during the current period of austerity (Allen et al., 2015; Littler, 2013) and presents a glamorous and aspirational lifestyle sometimes described as ‘emulation framing’ (Negra, 2009, in Littler, 2013; Kendall, 2005). I argue that Kirstie is capitalising on a ‘reinvigorated romanticisation of the housewife’ (Littler, 2013: 233) which has coincided with the recent period of austerity in the United Kingdom, representing a glorification of the domestic as a space in which to shelter from the increasingly turbulent public sphere. This retreatism (Negra, 2009) is central to Kristie’s self-presentation and, I would argue, has intensified significantly in the current COVID-19 crisis, with domestic spaces quite literally providing a shelter from the threat of virus. Throughout Keep Crafting and Carry On, Kirstie reiterates that these activities provide a distraction from current events, and when showcasing crafts from the audiences, she exclaims in a demonstration of nostalgic, retreatist discourse: ‘One thing is for sure, you are not letting this crisis crush your crafting spirit’. It is important to consider exactly what it is about Kirstie Allsopp that broadcasters and audiences pivot towards at a time of uncertainty, as well as the cultural work her domestic goddess persona and her particular brand of nostalgic British retreatism do.

In the current context, domestic spaces have been reconfigured as spaces in which multiple forms of unwaged and waged labour co-exist. Care work and domestic labour which were previously seen as private endeavours – and which disproportionately burden women – now exist in the same space in which many people are newly consigned to carry out their paid work; productive and reproductive labour are physically confined to one space. In addition, we have seen the domestic space become the epicentre of political power in a more traditional sense, illustrated by viral pictures of politicians’ home lives as they conduct meetings over Zoom and in which the bookshelves of public figures are intimately scrutinised. Perhaps most notably, the chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak posted a picture of himself ‘working from home’ in a hoodie – a symbolic shift to the casual and intimate, with his ‘work’ being managing the economy at a time of crisis.

With new forms of labour and political decision making being produced from these domestic spaces, the country has been forced to acknowledge what feminists have always known: that the domestic is an inherently politicised space; that the personal is political. It is important to consider here the ideological work that Kirstie’s narratives of cosy nostalgia, retro-femininity and retreatism in the domestic space do to challenge this resurgent possibility of politicising the domestic and understanding the domestic space as one in which injustices can be challenged. As Jilly Boyce Kay (2020) has suggested, the hyper-visibility of mediated domestic spaces in celebrity culture during the crisis has often served to obscure the inequalities and violence perpetuated in these spaces, and we can understand Kirstie’s insistence on the home as a haven and crafting as meditation or distraction as part of this obscuration – a doubling down on the framing of home as an apolitical retreat.

In fact, the notion of ‘working from home’ and engaging in entrepreneurial pursuits in response to crisis is nothing new for women, whose work has always been precarious and undervalued, and who have consistently been framed as responsible for bearing the brunt of austerity measures in the home in order to protect the family. Equally, this demand for entrepreneurial spirit is nothing new for Kirstie Allsopp, who has directly capitalised from crisis. In many ways, Kirstie embodies the maternal femininity and entrepeneurialism of the ‘mumpreneur’ figure, an individual who exhibits the characteristics of the thrifty, nostalgic housewife but uses them in an entrepreneurial sense outside of the typical workplace (Allen and Taylor, 2012; Littler, 2017; Orgad and De Benedictis, 2015).

Despite this entrepreneurialism, Kirstie indulges in what I have termed ‘performative thriftiness’ (Martin, 2020) throughout her programmes, invoking narratives of thrift which are framed as virtuous and which allow audiences to feel satisfied that the moral imperatives of frugality and modesty are being engaged, despite the ostensible ‘thrift’ often being surrounded by evidence of Kirstie’s personal wealth and indulgence. This performative thriftiness continues in her lockdown programming, where we are consistently assured she is, like most of the nation, ‘working from home’ – crafting with objects found lying around her house. There is no mention in the programme that she is actually working from her sizable second home, and the programme is interspersed with segments from her other shows where she has access to a wealth of resources, including a workshop in central London, crafting experts and a vast array of materials and tools. This reinforces the notion that thriftiness for Kirstie is not a response to material scarcity and economic deprivation, but rather an aesthetic and moral choice. This notion of virtue continues throughout Kirstie’s lockdown programming, but has adapted from demonstrations of thrift as morally desirable to demonstrations of ‘staying home and saving lives’ as morally desirable. Again, the focus here is distinctly individual – the ‘choice’ to stay at home and protect the country is framed as a civic duty in patriotic terms, with no discussion of the constraints of this choice. This ‘choice’ to stay at home which is framed as a feminised moral imperative obscures the visibility of those who are not afforded the luxury of this choice, such as those who work in the garment manufacturing industry in the UK city of Leicester, who have been forced to work on illegally low wages and with unsafe working practices throughout ‘lockdown’ (Bland, 2020).

It appears that the rise of the demand for this form of feminised, domestic entrepreneurialism at a time of deepening gender inequality due to austerity measures has further intensified during the economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 crisis. The UK Women’s Budget Group (2020) has found that ‘Women are doing more unpaid work, at high risk of losing their job and are more likely to be pushed further into poverty as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic’. The material realities for women bearing the brunt of austerity measures are unlikely to improve, and yet the popularity of the mumpreneurial, thrifty housewife embodied by Kirstie shows little sign of wavering.

Kirstie’s particular brand of domestic femininity and the housewife aesthetic can be understood as part of a general ‘surge of traditionalist discourses of gender and labour’ (Negra and Tasker, 2014: 6) and is consistent with research into the cultural figure of the happy, thrifty housewife (Allen et al., 2015; Bramall, 2013; Jensen, 2012). Kim Allen et al. (2015) suggest that ‘the figure of the happy housewife does considerable cultural work for a government determined to revive “traditional” family values and cut public spending’ (p. 913), and this critique can also be levelled at the figure of Kirstie. I would suggest that Kirstie’s particular brand of nostalgic femininity has decidedly political implications, despite the consistent framing of herself as apolitical and simply a crafting enthusiast.

Social, cultural and political conservatism are coded throughout her programming. Heteronormativity and nostalgia are reinforced through the rigidly entrenched gender roles which present in her performative coupling with Phil Spencer, who is her onscreen partner in other shows, as well as through the nostalgic discourses around British history and empire, the invocation of nationalist sentiments, celebratory perspectives on colonialism and British military history, and frequent celebrations of the British Royal Family. Kirstie mobilises nostalgia to negotiate her own femininity, which is closely tied to the traditional gendered role of a housewife, associated with an imagined White past before the apparent complications of contemporary feminism. Similarly, she utilises nostalgic versions of British history and references to World War II (WWII) to encourage a collective memory for a time of moral simplicity and cultural hegemony, before the apparent difficulties and complexities of contemporary society.

These ongoing celebratory and nostalgic invocations of British Empire found throughout Kirstie’s programmes are reinforced by an uncritical perspective on ‘colonial’ style, interspersed with discourses which celebrate Britain’s role in WWII and emphasise Kirstie’s need to ‘restore pride’ in British homes, discourses which demonstrate a ‘postcolonial melancholia’ (Gilroy, 2004). There are multiple visual references to the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ poster throughout many of her programmes, with her COVID-19 lockdown show named explicitly after this symbol for British resilience during adversity. Many scholars and commentators have recognised the politically motivated resurgence of the Keep Calm and Carry On mantra during this most recent period of austerity (Bramall, 2013; Diprose, 2015; Edyvane, 2013; Hatherley, 2015; Hinton and Redclift, 2009) and have explored its depoliticising implications. The appeals to a British ‘blitz spirit’ have been critiqued by scholars who suggest that the sense of resilience in the face of adversity is used to pacify the British public in the wake of significant cuts to public services and welfare, and increasing precarity in all aspects of their lives (Biressi and Nunn, 2013; Diprose, 2015).

From this perspective, Kirstie’s invocations of the blitz spirit and references to ‘keep calm and carry on’ contribute to an austerity discourse which encourages patriotic stoicism in the face of adversity and presents this stoicism as morally desirable. This discourse is reinvigorated in the current crisis as part of a wider shift towards what Helen Wood and Bev Skeggs have characterised as an affective mood of sentimentality (Wood and Skeggs, 2020) with Kirstie encouraging crafts in the form of rainbows to symbolically encourage ‘key workers’, who she describes as ‘heroes, who need to keep up the fight’ (rather than exploited labourers who deserve pay rises and safe working conditions). Kirstie’s embrace of such narratives embodies what Ros Gill and Shani Orgad (2018) term the specifically classed and gendered psychological ‘turn to resilience’ at a time of increasing structural inequality, marked by unrelenting positivity and hyper-femininity. Although this stoicism is sometimes interpreted as depoliticisation (Diprose, 2015), the focus on resilience rather than resistance is distinctly political, in that it deters critique of the state and can therefore be seen as complicit in the government’s approach and its duplicitous reassertions that we are ‘all in this together’. Other reappropriated war-time austerity slogans such as ‘dig for victory’, ‘make do-and-mend’ and ‘holiday at home’ have been reinvigorated during the COVID-19 crisis (notably in British TV by middle-class, White celebrities such as Jamie Oliver). These slogans have found new life in a crisis marked by food supply shortages, inability to travel and reassertions that we are ‘all in this together’ despite startling inequalities in how the crisis is felt, as Francesca Sobande has interrogated and conceptualised as a ‘commodification of care’ (Sobande, 2020).

The recirculation of these nostalgic, collective misrememberings of an idealised past does significant cultural work in the creation of a particularly British notion of stoicism, conveniently drawn upon at times of unprecedented and ever-increasing social inequalities. In the context of Kirstie’s programmes and personal brand, the use of the ‘Keep calm and carry on’ references, interspersed with discourses of heroes and victories, as well as visuals of the Union Jack flag found throughout her programmes, serve as symbolic reinforcements of the British blitz spirit which is presented as desirable, a style inspiration, and a source of resilience, stoicism and pride for the British public.

As Joke Hermes and Annette Hill (2020) argued, ‘Corona has re-consolidated television as master storyteller and as platform for cultural citizenship’. It is therefore crucial that we consider who is appointed storyteller status and what agendas they may serve politically. I would argue that Kirstie’s ubiquity across British television during austerity and her immediately granted prime-time TV slot at the start of lockdown are significant in a period marked both by intense inequalities and reinvigorations of nostalgic discourses of national ‘character’ centred on resilience and stoicism. At a time when we have seen global outrage at systemic racism, and more specifically within British society – notably those impacted by discriminatory and harmful immigration systems such as the Windrush generation, who are still dealing with ongoing injustices - we must interrogate what purpose nostalgic discourses of the British Empire serve. As we continue to push for an education system that fully explores and grapples with the legacies of colonialism and how it has shaped contemporary British life, should we not also begin to question the hegemonic and nostalgic discourses of empire and Whiteness which have populated austerity popular culture?

As Stuart Hall (1981) famously stated, popular culture is the arena in which the struggle for consent for, and resistance against, popular ideas takes place. As we begin to see that the inequalities which were accelerated by a decade of austerity intensify even further for women, and particularly women of colour during the current crisis, perhaps it is time to reassess our understandings of the domestic space, the ways in which it is mediated, and its subversive potential. Instead of understanding it as a space to retreat into, for consenting to and individually dealing with inequality through the White hyper-femininity and nostalgia for empire and a blitz spirit demonstrated on television by Kirstie Allsopp, perhaps we can begin to understand the domestic space as a site for resistance and acknowledge its political potential. Since March, domestic space has proven its capacity for political intervention, becoming the site in which nationwide and global ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests were organised. Campaigners gave interviews, talks and created resources from their own homes to mobilise the public into challenging the dominant systems of racism, sexism and injustice in British society. Perhaps the potential of the domestic space in public life is not confined to the nostalgic White femininity represented by Kirstie, and instead can be understood as a site for political action and - crucially - a refusal to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.