Making Futures 2017

Crafting a Sustainable Modernity - Towards a Maker Aesthetics of Production and Consumption

Making Futures will be held within the magnificently sited Mount Edgcumbe estate on the River Tamar opposite the city of Plymouth, Devon, UK.

The CALL FOR ABSTRACTS is now open and the closing date for receipt is
22nd May 2017.

Building on the success of its four previous editions, Making Futures invites proposals for papers and presentations that address the main conference topic, thematic fields and workshops. Making Futures seeks to be broad and inclusive, and invites a diverse range of response, from artists, craftspeople, designer-makers, FabLab and maker-movement enthusiasts, campaigners and activists, curators, historians and theorists.

CONFERENCE AIMS: Making Futures is a research platform exploring contemporary craft and maker movements as 'change agents' within 21st century society. Convinced of the transformative potential of small-scale making and its capacity to contribute to new progressive futures, our purpose is to examine and promote the possibilities for maker economies built around contemporary craft, neo-artisanal design-to-make and related creative micro-entrepreneurs and movements.

The September 2017 edition operates under the rubric 'crafting a sustainable modernity: towards a maker aesthetics of production and consumption'. The idea here is of reclaiming a craft future within a contemporary moment that (contested definitions of the present notwithstanding) still takes place essentially within the 'arc of Modernity'. Thus rather than seeing maker cultures as necessarily antithetical to contemporary Modernity, we want to see if we can frame emerging regimes of neo-artisanal production as part of a forward-looking attempt to reimagine a viable Modernity, one in which small-scale makers and micro-manufacturers try to innovate around technology, form, function, aesthetic meaning and social relevance - engaging in responsible (often place-based) market economics but striving to step outside the exploitative forms of commodification associated with the 'disembedded' global markets resonant of neo-liberalism.

WORKSHOPS: we are calling for submissions to three workshops that address 'crafting a sustainable modernity' by triangulating approaches to industry, care and community, and the broader social leadership contributions that contemporary makers might make: 

• Craft in Industry: in collaboration with the Royal College of Art.
• The Well Maker Space: in collaboration with Community21, University of Brighton and University of Wolverhampton.
• Making Leaders (Innovation & Change): in collaboration with CraftNet, the independent leadership and strategic development network for contemporary craft. THEMATIC FIELDS: alternatively, submissions might address one of six themes:
• Craft in Modernity - Critical Perspectives on Producers and Consumers
• Lifecycles of Material Worlds - Sustainability in Practice
• Procedures of Making - Materials & Processes in Transformation
• Translations Across (Post-Colonial) Local-Global Divides
• Craft in an Expanded Field
• Making Thinking - Crafting Education TWO EXHIBITIONS: will run during Making Futures:
• We The People (are the work): a citywide exhibition that will build connections and collaborations that question our engagement with politics and identity, activated by a series of newly commissioned artworks by internationally renowned artists.
• Plymouth Art Weekender: a three-day annual event that takes place across the city from the 22nd- 24th September 2017, showcasing a diverse range of events by local, national and international artists. In addition to the above two events, we expect to announce smaller on-site exhibitions at the Mount Edgcumbe conference location.

CONFERENCE BURSARIES: a limited bursary scheme is open to independent makers.

http://makingfutures.plymouthart.ac.uk/