Thematic Sessions
Each edition of the Making Futures journal brings together a spectrum of peer-reviewed and selected speaker responses to the IV edition ‘Making Futures: Return of the Maker…’ headline theme. These contributions are organised through the three Research Workshops, the Digital Crafting Panel, and six Thematic Sessions to which they correspond as downloadable PDF papers with authors appearing in alphabetical order.
1. Lifecycles of Material Worlds - Sustainability in Practice
Will investigate the ways in which practitioners are proactively exploring sustainably engaged projects and practices. These initiatives might involve new materials innovation and/or pursue localised sourcing; perhaps incorporating cradle-to-cradle design and make strategies, or associated approaches of make and mend, re-cycling, up-cycling, re-use, and sharing.
Boulesteix, Madeleine
Over twenty years of making upcycled chandeliers
Fairbanks, Marianne
Solar Textiles: Collaborating to Craft a Powerful Cloth
Harper, Alison
Yet more re:words Reverberations and Resistances
Lambert, Ian
Critical Making with Aluminium Sandcasting: Design Practice into Practice-led Research
Mottram, Alexa
Attachment to Green Products: A Case Study of Leather Slippers made from Reclaimed Materials
Paoliello, Carla
Relations Between Identity and Landscape in Brazilin Craftwork
Pittman, Lois
The Designer-makers Craft - ecologically principled practice.
Roberts, Christine
Above Ground - Post-Consumerism and the Designer-Maker
Singleton, Paul
Mud to Lux
Tyler, Joanne
Temporary Craft; All You'll Ever Need Is Here.
Abstract PDF | Full Paper PDF
Visser, Andy | Wolton, Paula | Miller, Liz
One Hut Full - Woolly yarns in a contemporary context
2. Craft in an Expanded Field
Increasingly we hear of medical researchers ‘crafting’ 3D individualised body parts and structures, often using 3D printing and growing techniques. These approaches shade into biologically customised compounds that work at molecular levels… Meanwhile, Sennett famously speaks of the craft of Linux programmers, and Crawford that of motorcycle mechanics.
Charnley, Kim
Theaster Gate's Dorchester Projects and The Craft Paradigm
Jessop, Michelle
Sensorial Sensibility: Crafting Relational Strategies in Contemporary Jewellery Display
Kinnunen, Nora
Craft beyond craft: the transformative potential of craft's resilience
Macpherson, Polly | Smith, Phil
Choosing materials for a guiding of things
Robins, Freddie
The Perfectly Imperfect
Smitheram, Miranda
Haptic acts of making: a surface imaging design practice using digital and virtual tools.
3. Critical Perspectives on Producers and Consumers
What are the historically informed critical-cultural and economic perspectives that help define practitioners and consumers in relation to the political economies of industrialisation in its Fordist and post-Fordist phases? How are these psychological positions and desiring economies evolving with regards to a future in which environmental sustainability becomes a key (if not singularly the key) operative paradigm?
Cassidy, Tracy
The Value of Design in Craft for a More Sustainable Future
Keyte, Julia
Objects in Purgatory and Hardware Hopes
Reubens, Rebecca
To Craft, By Design, For Sustainability: Deconstructing craft as an input into constructing sustainability design
4. Translations Across Local-Global Divides
What are the tensions and flows expressed in craft and design-to-make production and consumption in the ‘post-colonial’ contexts of contemporary global capitalism and its possible futures? For example, in the context of contemporary China, craft and design are fields in which the meanings of past, present and future, of private and public competencies and their boundaries and interactions, are contested and negotiated...
Cho, Hyeyoung
The Significance of Biennales
Clifford, Ruth
Design Education and Handloom Weaving in India
Hanson, Maria | Levick-Parkin, Melanie
Create & Connect: Empowering female artisan craft makers in Zanzibar through design thinking.
Jung, Jeyon | Walker, Stuart | Evans, Martyn
DESIGN ROOTS AND CREATIVE ECOLOGIES: Understanding culturally significant designs, products and practices
Mohd Rashid, Aiman | Meagher, Mark | Lawrence, Ranald
Reverse-Engineering Culture: Recovering Traditional Craft Practices In Malay Housebuilding
Newnham, Kate | Brown, Helen | Blakey, Claire
Ahead of the Curve: new china from China
Rhodes, Sarah
Reframing Collaboration through the Craft of Ubuntu: Design Students Collaborating with Artisans
White, Christopher
Bark-cloth drifting: The migration of Pacific woodblock prints, arising hybrid forms and digital counterparts
Younan, Sarah
Remixing the Past: Memory objects in a digital realm
5. Materials & Processes of Making
Where does craft, and making more generally, sit in relation to, on the one hand, the reinvention or repurposing of older technologies and materials, and new emerging materials and media on the other? Do traditional craft methods necessarily provide for more ecologically sustainable practices than modern industrial systems? And what relationships are there, or might there be, between craft and small-scale making practices and advanced technological models of production...
Bamford, Roderick
Accident, determinism and hermeneutics: relationships between analogue and digital fabrication
Ionascu, Adriana
Modelling Form: Ways of Making, Hybrid Crafting
Joseph, Frances | Smitheram, Miranda | Kalyanji, Jyoti
Fluid Materialities: Physical and digital modes of textile making
McEntaggart, Patrick | Levick-Parkin, Melanie | Wood, Johnny
Making the Transient Permanent - Exploring the translation of personal data into material forms via the 3D printing of memory objects.
Moore, Rachelle | Smith, Amanda
The Transference of Craft to Digital Knowledge through the Medium of Knitted Textiles
Murphy, Ingrid | Pigott, Jon
The Campanologists Teacup: A Creative Collaboration of Technology and Making
6. Making Thinking – Crafting Education
Most will agree that a better future depends significantly on whether we can successfully educate younger generations to appreciate the importance of natural systems, the social structures dependent upon them, and how to live creatively, adapt and innovate, within a context of finite energy and material resources. Purposive engagement with materials through art, craft and making, as forms of concrete problem solving are championed as learning platforms that can engender these values...
Bennett, Julia
Trends in craft education and the value attached to craft.
Bernabei, Roberta | Cappellieri, Alba | Ugur Yavuz, Secil | Tenuta, Livia
CAD/CAM and Jewellery Design Education
Bisco, Matthew
The Making Project
Boyes, Alma
The value, relevance and sustainability of ‘craft skilling’ in Higher Education today.
England, Lauren
Social Networks and Networked Institutions in Contemporary Glassmaking Careers
Haase, Jeffrey
How Temporary Space Can Create Permanent Knowledge: “The Shrink Happening”
Hasdoğan, Gülay | Hasdoğan, Mustafa
Empowering Craftspeople by Reinforcing Design Skills: The Case of a Design Training Course for Woodworking in Kastamonu, Turkey
Lambert, Ian | Iliopoulou, Tatiana
Diverting Textile Waste from Landfill with Crafted Objects
Lawry, John
Making Futures - A Bespoke Life
McAllister, Helen
Making / Thinking - the craft of education
Shercliff, Emma
Collectively making thinking spaces using drawing and stitching
Stewart, Hannah | Tooze, James
Future Makespaces and redistributed manufacturing