Local Resolutions Part 19 of 29

This is the nineteenth in a series of 29 ways to help your local community online in 2010. If you missed it, you may wish to read the introductory post.

In this post, I suggest that photographing or videoing local art galleries, performances, and businesses is a great way to help strengthen your community while you’re online. This series has included recent posts about sharing certain photos, staying in touch with your legislators, and connecting with people different from you.

Sometimes national/international websites make it easy to shop local.

If you follow links to books from this blog, you’ll notice they take you to IndieBound, not Amazon. That’s a suggestion I got from Aaron’s Books in Lititz.

My favorite example of a big site that lets you shop local, though, is Etsy.

It’s so easy that I could make this resolution entry one line: Shop local on Etsy.

Etsy is extraordinary even just for browsing. Everything is handmade, and there is no shortage of ideas of things that can be beautifully made by hand—knit scarves (or just the hand-spun yarn), jewelry, business card holders, framed art, clothing, furniture, dolls.

If you search the local section for Lancaster, PA, you’ll find no fewer than one hundred shops, including the inspired jewelry of Mio Studio, drawings by Dan McEwen in Drawing Blanks, and the yarny things of KnittyDirtyGirl. Other Etsyists, please share a link to your shop in the comments below.

What I love most about Etsy’s shop local function is that it gives me all the convenience of shopping online with the satisfaction that I’m supporting local talent.