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PLYMOUTH COLLEGE OF ART ANNOUNCE:
CALL EXTENSION - SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 1ST
JUNE 2015
MAKING FUTURES
CRAFT AND THE (RE)TURN OF THE MAKER IN A POST-GLOBAL
SUSTAINABLY AWARE SOCIETY
WEBSITE AT: http://makingfutures.plymouthart.ac.uk/
Making Futures will be held on Thursday 24th and Friday 25th
September 2015 in the magnificently sited Mount Edgcumbe house
on the River Tamar opposite the city of Plymouth, Devon, UK.
CALL EXTENSION - SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 1ST
JUNE 2015
By popular request THE CLOSING DATE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS IS
EXTENDED TO 1ST JUNE 2015
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS:
Making Futures investigates contemporary craft and maker movements as
‘change agents’ within 21st century society, particularly in relation to global
sustainability agendas, social innovation and community regeneration.
Embracing contemporary craft and making as instances of thought in action, and
convinced of their transformative potential at personal and communal
levels, Making Futures envisages the ‘return of the maker’ as a radically open
project capable of generating new progressive possibilities - of contributing to
new social and economic futures.
Making Futures welcomes submissions from all who have an interest in the
relationship between contemporary making, sustainability and social change,
including artists, craftspeople, designers and design groups, curators, historians,
theorists, campaigners, activists, and enterprises engaging in making and/or
with makers.
We welcome proposals for practice-led case studies, presentations based in
critical-theoretical and historical analysis, and unconventional formats that might
include performance, objects, AV, and other media and materials. The working
language is English but the scope is international and we welcome accounts from
non-western contexts.
CONFERENCE THEMES:
The call is open to three Research Workshops and the six Indicative Themes that
more generally underpin the Making Futures series:
Indicative Themes:
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Lifecycles of Material Worlds (Sustainability in Practice)
Craft in an Expanded Field
Critical Perspectives on Producers & Consumers
Translations Across Local-Global Divides
Materials & Processes of Making
Making Thinking (Crafting Education)
Research Workshops:
 Digital Crafting – Defining the Field in collaboration with the School
of Materials, The Royal College of Art.
 Makers & Frugal Innovation in collaboration with the Judge
Business School, University of Cambridge, and Fab Lab Barcelona.
 Place-Making-Space: tools and methods for ‘crafting communities’
and ‘making places’ in collaboration with the Community21
Sustainable Design Research Group at the University of Brighton.
KEYNOTES:
We are pleased to announce the following confirmed keynotes:
 Rebecca Burgess, Executive Director of Fibershed, San Geronimo,
Northern California, USA. Fibreshed is an international network of
regional textile communities based on carbon farming,
regenerative textile manufacturing, and public education, and a cofounder of the Carbon Cycle Institute (CCI).
 Keith Harrison, International Artist-Maker and Research Professor
at Bath Spa University, UK. Keith has been involved in a series of
process-based live public experiments that investigate the direct
physical transformation of clay from a raw state utilising industrial
and domestic electrical systems. Kieth will also be showing in one
of the associated exhibitions, Acts of Making.
 Mark Miodownik, Director of the Institute of Making, University
College London, UK, a multidisciplinary research club for those
interested in the made world: from makers of molecules to makers
of buildings, synthetic skin to spacecraft, soup to clothes, from
furniture to cities.
 Cameron Tonkinwise, Director of Design Studies, School of Design,
Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Cameron’s areas of research
include Sustainable Design, systems of shared use, and the role
designers can play in enabling social systems change.
CONFERENCE EXHIBITIONS:
Alongside the conference we will run two major exhibitions: Acts of Making: a
Crafts Council Touring Project in partnership with Plymouth College of Art and
Plymouth City Council, Arts & Heritage; 2015 Jerwood Makers Open: a UK
national exhibition commissioned by Jerwood Visual Arts.
CONFERENCE BURSARIES:
A limited number of full bursaries are available to independent makers, see
website for details.
REGISTRATION OPEN:
To facilitate high levels of delegate interaction conference places are limited.
Early bird offer: book before 17TH May 2015 and save £40 on the Full 2 Day
Registration Fee.
FOR FULL DETAILS PLEASE VISIT THE CONFERENCE WEBSITE AT:
http://makingfutures.plymouthart.ac.uk/