Sarah Corbett

An award-winning activist, Ashoka Fellow, author and founder of the global Craftivist Collective. Corbett founded the Craftivist Collective in 2009 after demand from people around the world who wanted to join in her unique approach to craftivism (craft + activism). With over a decade of honing her unique ‘Gentle Protest’ methodology, combining neuroscience, positive psychology, campaign strategy that often goes beautiful handicrafts.

Born 1983 into an activist family in West Everton (inner city Liverpool): fourth most deprived ward in the UK. Her father was the local vicar and mum is still the local politician. Sarah was involved in local campaigns from the age of 3 squatting in social housing with her community (they won!) and seeing first hand our community battling against the effects of inequality. A trip to South Africa in 1991 for her father’s sabbatical to learn about the peace and reconciliation work of Mandela and Tutu when she was 8 years hugely influenced her activism. At secondary school Sarah created a successful campaign to gain lockers for her peers and implemented recycling bins before they became mandatory. Sarah learnt even more from her failed campaign to eradicate ‘gym knickers’ from her sports uniform. She went on to work for international development agencies including Christian and as Activism Manager at Oxfam GB.

In 2008, burned out from too much confrontation, slactivism and clicktivism, and doubting the effectiveness of many elements of divisive activism, Sarah started looking for alternatives. Corbett’s pioneering work has directly helped change hearts, minds, policies and laws around the world. Corbett works with national charities such as Save the Children, Unicef, Tearfund and The Climate Coalition amongst others, creates bespoke events for museums and and galleries such as Tate, V&A, British Museum as well as collaborates with unusual allies such as Secret Cinema and the Design Museum Danmark in Copenhagen to reach new and nervous audiences to activism. You may have spotted her BBC Radio 4 ‘FourThought’ still on BBC Sounds or as a contributor to BBC3 Craftivism documentary, CBBC Our School series or Sky Arts ‘Statues Redressed’ award-winning documentary. WWF used Corbett’s 10-point manifesto to create their own successful craftivism campaign that led to a change in law to protect migrating birds. Corbett’s national campaigns with ShareAction directly led to Marks and Spencers increasing the wages of 50,000 of their staff! Corbett co-created the Girlguiding Craftivism badge, has exhibited in Stockholm, Helsinki Design Week, Brighton and London. Sarah was included in the Crafts Council 2018 ‘Power List’ and her TEDx speech ‘Activism Needs Introverts’ was chosen as a TED Talk Of The Day with over a 1.2million views so far. For her services in design activism and public engagement Goldsmiths, University of London granted Corbett an Honorary Fellowship in July 2022. Corbett’s book ‘How To Be A Craftivist: the art of gentle protest’ is now available in paperback and her new project book The Craftivist Collective Handbook was published 2nd May 2024 and is currently a finalist in the Creative Book Awards 2025