Making Futures II Reviewed
Making Futures II, Copyright Plymouth College of Art & Design
Making Futures II – The Crafts as Change Maker in Sustainably Aware Cultures
Convened by Plymouth College of Art and Design
September 15th – 16th 2011, Dartington Hall, Devon
Review by Dr Karen Yair, Research Associate, Crafts Council
Making Futures is an academic conference drawing together makers, educators, theorists and craft support agencies for two days of networking and debate on the themes of sustainability and the environment
First convened by Plymouth College of Art in 2009, the inaugural conference took place at Mount Edgcumbe House, on the Devon/Cornwall border. For this, the second Making Futures conference, delegates returned to Devon and the quiet seclusion of Dartington Hall and Estate.
Dartington’s complex history of engagement with the arts and sustainability presented a starting point for the conference. The welcome from Professor Andrew Brewerton, Principal of Plymouth College of Art, highlighted the role played by the Estate – in particular through the International Conference of Potters and Weavers it hosted in 1952 – in helping to establish the studio craft movement. Equally, this address could have pointed to the Estate’s experimental – and sometimes controversial – work pioneering new approaches to rural regeneration and environmental sustainability, in setting a context for the conference.
Making Futures is a multi-strand event: six thematic strands and two research workshops, held in small seminar rooms, were punctuated by four keynote lectures in the Great Hall. The strands and workshops were:
o Craft as Social Process
o Craft in an Expanded Field
o Critical Perspectives on Post-Industrial Futures
o Endangered Subjects / Ethical Minds
o Local-Global Translations and Dialogues
o Practice-Based (Re)Definitions and Positions
o Research Workshop – Furnace Demonstration
o Research Workshop – Regeneration in Glass
Highlights:
Forty peer-reviewed papers were presented across these different workshops and strands. Due to their concurrent programming, we weren’t able to hear all the papers presented, but here are three of our highlights.
‘Re-thinking the Politics of Prosperity: the role of craft’, by Professor Kate Soper
Professor Soper’s opening keynote set a high bar, taking delegates beyond the craft debate to a philosophical position of ‘alternative hedonism’. Her research interests encompass environmental philosophy and aesthetics of nature; theories of needs and consumption; and feminism and cultural theory. Whilst describing herself as an ‘armchair philosopher who has no idea how to make the armchair’, Soper’s image of a ‘found’ wine cooler – essentially a wine-bottle shaped rock pool – also revealed her as something of a DIY maker.
In Soper’s view, environmental degradation is unlikely to be halted by fear of its implications for future generations – in a culture of fast living and rampant consumption, this fear can never supersede the pleasures of instant gratification. Her premise is that environmental campaigning would be better served by focusing on replacing the desire to consume with that of living a creative life…. in which craft plays a part.
In a direct rebuke to Glenn Adamson’s position on ‘hobbyist’ craft as a self-serving bourgeois pursuit, Soper demonstrated the particular value of amateur making as part of the ‘alternative hedonism’ she put forward. In the pursuit of creative expression – rather than passive consumption – she said, people can live more lightly, as well as with greater personal fulfillment. Craft just needs to become more pro-active in engaging directly with the sustainability debate.
‘Re-crafting Capitalism, Regenerating Societies: How do designer-makers amplify, build and regenerate social capital?’ By Professor Alastair Fuad-Luke
This focus on craft as a transformative, creative process continued with Alastair Fuad-Luke’s paper, which reviewed three specific instances of makers working on social inclusion and regeneration projects in different parts of the UK. Fuad-Luke’s investigation of the roles suggests that makers’ roles in building social capital is about more than making – it’s also about creative facilitation, within a distinctive community rooted in a particular place.
Fuad-Luke’s preliminary study had begun to look at theoretical models for framing and evaluating the impact of this type of work, particularly drawing on Jonathan Porritt’s ‘Five Capitals Framework’. His paper discussed Social Return on Investment evaluation mechanisms, amongst others. There is interesting territory to be explored here, in terms of how different people involved in a project will value its outcomes and impact – we will wait to see, with interest, how the research develops.
’Intelligent Craftwork: Anthropological studies with masons and woodworkers’ By Professor Trevor Marchand
Finally, Professor Trevor Marchand took us deeper into the making process, via his anthropological research with minaret builders in Yemen and furniture maker trainees in East London. Marchand’s research interests focus on architecture, building-craft knowledge and apprenticeship, undertaken from a participant perspective. His doctoral research had included a full-time apprenticeship in Yemen – a process which had enabled him to communicate with minaret builders in their own way, through demonstration and gesture as well as words. In the process, he had not only learned about knowledge transmission. hierarchies and ritual customs amongst the builders, but also about the value of making itself, as an ethnographic research method.
Subsequent research had seen Marchand apply a similar method to work with students at the Building Crafts College in Stratford, East London. We will be looking out for his forthcoming book, ‘The Pursuit of Pleasurable Work,’ which documents the social relations, professional aspirations and economic challenges he observed amongst his fellow students, as well as advancing his theory of embodied cognition and communication.
Crafts Council presentations:
The Crafts Council chaired one strand at the 2009 conference, and this time we contributed two papers – one keynote and one peer-reviewed – to the debate.
Our keynote paper – ‘Contemporary Craft Mapping Study and Sustainability’ – was written and presented by Chris Gibbon, Senior Consultant at BOP Consulting and myself.
The paper presented some of the initial overall findings currently emerging from Craft in an Age of Change, a major statistical survey of UK makers commissioned by the Crafts Council, Creative Scotland, the Arts Council of Wales and Craft Northern Ireland. Having set out the context, the paper then focused in on survey questions designed to chart how makers’ environmental and ethical values had effected change in their work.
This research indicates that almost one third of makers have made some change to their practice in response to environmental concerns, whether – most commonly – by sourcing sustainable materials and production processes, by prioritising local trading or in other ways such as recycling. In their questions, delegates were also keen to pick up on data relating to social equity issues, in particular the newly fine-grained data available on disability, which confirms that dyslexia is almost twice as common amongst makers as in the UK population as a whole. The full report will be available from November 2011, and the Crafts Council’s briefing note, ‘Craft and Environmental Sustainability’, is available here
Our peer reviewed paper, ‘Craft and the Creative Lifecycle – Craft in Changing Times,’ looked in more detail at the work of makers engaged with the environmental and social sustainability agendas.
Expanding on a major, qualitative research study of makers’ working lives published by the Crafts Council in 2010, it showed how makers are making a difference as innovators, distributors, producers retailers and educators – essentially, as providers of environmentally aware services and systems, as well as craft objects. It also showed the significance of portfolio working as a means of balancing ethical, creative and commercial goals. Questions from other delegates showed a strong interest in how educational paradigms might support this diversification and ethical engagement through making.
In addition to the highlights above, we attended ‘Fashion Diggers: Transgressive making for personal benefit’ by Amy Twigger-Holroyd; ‘Take a Look at these Hands’ by Malcolm Martin; and ‘Craft as a Socially Aware Nostalgic Practice: Re-envisioning a positive future’ by Mary Loveday-Edwards amongst others. We were also attracted by Martin Woolley’s paper, ‘Crafting the Mainstream – Sustaining research and practice through wider production engagement’ and by the Local-Global Translations and Dialogues including ‘Beyond Nourishing the Soul of a Nation: Craft in the context of South Africa’ by Sarah Rhodes.
Abstracts for these – and all other papers – are currently available online here where they will be joined by volume 2 of the full Making Futures journal in early 2011. In the meantime, volume 1 – containing all papers presented at Making Futures I (2009) is available here
Overall, Making Futures II presented a stimulating two days of content and networking. Plymouth College of Art is to be congratulated on the event’s smooth running and on its valuable contribution to debate.
