Alison Hastie
The Indigo Press is an independent publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction, based in London. Guided by a spirit of internationalism, feminism and social justice, we publish books to make readers see the world afresh, question their behaviour and beliefs, and imagine a better future.
Alison Hastie
Alison Hastie is a shoemaker who co-founded Green Shoes, a women’s collective shoemaking business, in Totnes, Devon, in 1981. This unique enterprise attracted
national attention and a following of dedicated customers, interested in the ethos of the group and the comfortable, long-lasting and repairable shoes that they made by
hand.
For nearly fifty years Alison has lived on Dartmoor, where she raised her
family and was involved in radical community activities, including The Dart magazine and the multi-generational MED Theatre.
Green Shoes: Forty years of a radical women’s craft collective
Coming of age in the early 1980s, Alison Hastie always knew she was different from the conventional young people around her. One night a voice spoke to her in a dream, telling her to ‘make shoes’, and this is how she spent forty years of her working life.
Living on Dartmoor, travelling between the countercultural town of Totnes and the surrounding villages, Alison made a home and a life for herself based on the principles of second-wave feminism, the idea that small is beautiful, and a deep immersive commitment to craft. Her company, Green Shoes, was featured in the national and international press, and making shoes took her travelling as far as the north of Finland, but she remained rooted in her environment, family and the women’s collective which, like the Ship of Theseus, was consistent in its values despite many changes of personnel.
Through personal tragedies, romantic relationships, motherhood, friendship, fire, flood and professional highs and lows, Alison describes her place in the long line of West Country radicals, teaches us how to hand-make a shoe, traces the history of shoemaking in politics and religion, and above all shows us the importance of being centred in place, time and community.
