What, Who & Why?
#MarchMeetTheMaker® is an Instagram Challenge, set by Joanne Hawker (and solely Joanne!) that runs throughout March every year. But it's more than just a challenge, it's a creative community that comes together to show people what they can do. It's about building each other up, making new connections, telling your small business story, growing your confidence and most importantly, it's about putting yourself out there.
The challenge was created in 2016 by Joanne. At the time, she was in bit of a creative rut with Instagram and couldn't find a way to pull herself out of it. Feeling determined, she went in search of challenge aimed at small creative businesses but couldn't find one. Feeling inspired, she went ahead and created a 31 day challenge which aims to show the different aspects of her business and asked her creative, small business friends to take part. And that's how #MarchMeetTheMaker was born. Little did she know that it would take off and gain over 761,000 posts on the hashtag in just 6 years!
Who is Joanne?
Joanne left university with a First Class Honours Degree in Graphic Communication and a couple years later, created a small handmade business. She decided that she wanted to chase her own dreams instead of working for someone else.
Joanne specialises in special occasion greeting cards but, also creates a range of cotton project pouches, enamel pins, and prints. She loves the community around Instagram, stripes and the colour yellow. She is also the human responsible for clogging up your Instagram feed with amazing makers every March with #MarchMeetTheMaker.