Autumn Work 2010

Articles:

A Darwinian Gale: the Recovery Consumer Marketplace in the Era of Consequences.  The Futures Company (2010).

Brigid Howarth Consultancy Ltd (2009).  Stimulating demand: market development strategy

for contemporary craft in the North East.  Crafts Council. 

Exploring Business Activity & Performance in the Craft Sector.  Cockpit Arts (2008). 

Morris Hargreaves McIntyre (2010) Consuming Craft: The Contemporary Craft Market in a Changing Economy. Crafts Council. 

Schwarz, M. & Yair, K. (2010).  Making Value: craft & the economic and social contribution of makers. Craft Council. 

Hall, L. Hunt, W. Pollard, E. (2010). Crafting Futures - a study of the early careers of crafts graduates from UK higher education institutions. Craft Council. 

Exhibitions and workshops:

Various (2010) Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera.  London: Tate Modern.   28 May – 3 October 2010.  

Meet David Attenborough: First Life.  (2010) Institute of Education: London.  8 November 2010, with Sir David Attenborough. 

Various.  Bayeux Tapestry.  (1476), wool yarn and linen, Bayeux, Normandy: Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux. 

Websites:

http://www.instructables.com/

http://www.etsy.com/

http://www.readymade.com/

http://presentandcorrect.com/

http://www.superuse.org/

http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/

http://www.artsusa.org/

http://www.inventables.com/

http://solutions.3m.co.uk/

http://www.materialconnexion.com/

http://www.materia.nl/

Christmas Reflection

A very productive month with over 2 weeks off work!  This has allowed me to work and develop my ideas for the Life Beyond a Box project, complete all my analysis on my 250 questionnaire repsonses, build my relationship with the girls at Craft Central and prepare my questions for the team at the Craft Council Research Centre.  I have also continued to chase other contacts who I would like to meet/interview. 

I feel my ideas are definitely coming together, I feel very positive about the progress I am making, and am looking forward to the new year.  

The girls at Craft Central have been so helpful and positive and I really hope that relationship continues in the New Year as I will need their help to get access to the designer makers and interns.  Each week I have been setting myself a number of tasks to complete and have really tried to stick to this.  I feel that the pace of my project has gone up a notch, but really needs to go up again, I know that the research phase needs to end now.  The artefact testing must take more of my time now, I need to be less cautious about the whole process.  

I know have a great bank of contacts for the artefact testing, people I  hope that will really give me great feedback to stretch me. 

I have felt lately that there has been a lot of form filling and project work during a period where we need to be pressing ahead with our personal projects.  Over the last year I have really enjoyed the briefs that have been set, especially the ones that allowed us to work as a group.  I wish there had been more, but I dont think this was the time. I feel that valuable time over the Christmas period was spent on something that did help me progress, but as my momentum was already pretty good I think I was already drawing the same conclusions.  

Box designs

Looking at designs for the box that the kit will live in.  I would like it to be made of recycled materials and be in one piece.  I have come up with the following options. 

I have been analyzing the responses to my questionnaires, my favourite quote from the professionals survey so far is:

"Craft can make our lives richer by making design much more democratic, unique and diverse. Craft gives autonomy to groups and individuals to identify and satisfy their own needs rather than buying into existing commodities, and in this way it can bring groups together."

Question Iteration

Traditional Practices and Values

family activities

groups

thrifty

re-using things

using your hands

communicating

learning from other generations

storytelling

Crafting

skill

production

designer/maker

handicrafts

arts & crafts

Life Beyond the Box

symbiosis

more complex than turtle shell

light

still a network

support

slides

less uniform

grow tall and beautiful

sew photos together

water air

motivation

momentum

quilting

positivity

knitted patches

confidence

plants growing in harsh environments

print photos onto material

Ed Vaizey, the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, believes that ‘craft is enjoying a bit of a Zeitgeist moment’. GQ December 2010.

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box from SUPERBIEN on Vimeo.

Craft Central Workshop

Today some of the lovely people at Craft Central in Clerkenwell allowed me observe and participate in a workshop to make Christmas decorations. As it was the last workshop before Christmas there were also a lot Craft Central interns present, these people work for free and have a real interest in crafting, some of them being designer makers themselves.

During the workshop I observed a lot of co-discovery, pupils teaching and helping each other. The attendees were all very warm, welcoming, friendly, encouraging and positive.

Everyone was creative in their own way, some strictly followed the instructions to create beautiful pieces, others interpreted it their own way, and some people just used the equipment and supplies to create their own expressions of their imaginations.

There was a range of people present, there were groups of friends, mother's and daughters, individuals, and even one guy! (Normally I found these things to be predominantly female).

Craft Central Preparation

Tomorrow I am going to Craft Central to meet the girls I have been talking to, for their Christmas Decoration workshop.

I have been thinking about questions I need to ask them:

- Have you seen a positive crafting trend
- Types of people/ages/families/groups in attendance
- What courses are more popular
- Has there been an increased trend in business growth for the designer/makers
- What effects have they noticed on their industry from the recession
- What can crafting bring to contemporary society?

LIFE BEYOND A BOX

What creature is your question?

Issued Wednesday 1 December 2010
Presentation: Tuesday 11 January 2011

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and t’is like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.
Shakespeare, Hamlet Act III Sc II

Introduction
Year Two of the course requires you to take a very high degree of independent initiative in re-evaluating, developing, and managing your major research project, including, essentially, the production of artefacts and their testing by external review, and a number of further re-iteration and re-testing processes.

Towards the end of Year One, you were asked to turn your question into an artefact-critique: a representation of a life form and its necessary support systems. This new project, which will consolidate and progress that experience, takes you through into the Second Year by asking you to build on your analytical and dimensionalisation skills to produce a further artefact that represents your research question in its independent form.

Brief
In response to your reflection and analysis following feedback on the earlier project, your project should be showing signs of flourishing independently in preparation for rigorous external review. You are now asked to create a new artefact that gives dimension to your ambitions and expectations for the evolution and growth of your project. The fragility and dependence of the earlier “life-form” will be giving way to an independent organism that is capable of blossoming, putting down roots, flying, hunting, foraging, grazing, swimming, digging, or whatever it needs to do to thrive and evolve.

As before, your production process should be focused on your ability to communicate rather than your ability to create entrancing objects, and remember that it is legitimate to find someone to help you to manufacture your artefacts.


Presentation
Your artefact is to be presented to your Year 2 Tutor and Tutor Group in the studio on Tuesday 11 January 2011. You are advised to avoid dependence on the functioning of technological elements.

Your representation of your project as an artefact should address at least the following questions:

• What kind of life-form has your project emerged as now?
• What elements of the box it needed to survive when in its previous incarnation has it retained, and how are these now dimensionalised?
• What new elements does it now need in its environment to sustain and develop it?
• Why have you produced your response in this particular way?
• How will you monitor and direct the development of the life-form you have created?
• How, and why, might your life-form fall prey to others in the food chain or to disasters?
• When next re-incarnated, or fully evolved, what might your life-form be?

After the presentation, you should also hand your tutor a hard copy of a revised What Why How If project proposal.


Criteria
The project presentation is not a summative assessment point, but it will be evaluated as part of ongoing formative assessment by your tutor. This will be evaluated against the following criteria:

• Your ability to give dimension to complex ideas through an artefact
• Your ability to critique your personal ambitions for the outcome of your project
• The clarity and relevance of your artefact presentation and its success in capturing your question
• Your ability to focus on essential points
• The level of risk-taking your artefact presentation displays
• Your ability to produce an artefact that does not use an aesthetic appeal as a substitute for content and communication.
• Your ability to evolve your project in response to feedback and other sources of relevant knowledge such as desk research, exhibitions, and other encounters.

Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

My favourites..

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to
be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.


6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.


8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

17. ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas
of others.

36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.

40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

Geometri futuristic curtain

"Subcutaneous patterns give a skeleton shape to the curtain.
Geometrical shapes transform the flat fabric to unexpected volumes, with constructed folds and sculptural crack lines. Hardening elements from rubber and vinyl, in a knitted carrier, makes the pattern movable.
A Soft wall, a Curtain, a Partition Panel, an Acoustic panel
A collection materials as inspiration towards interior textile"

This month I have been asking myself some of the following:

What can be learned from historical craft ideologies and philosophies?
Why is there a lack of understanding regarding the principles of craft?
What is the value of craft to the development of culture?

My area of research has not changed, it obviously develops and evolves the more I find out, as certain questions are clarified.

I have been lucky enough to talk to some really helpful people, especially at Craft Central.   They have agreed to let me observe more workshops and meet their interns.

I am also booked in to visit the Craft Council to use their research centre in the first 2 weeks in January.

The survey was sent out and I am getting some great replies, a lot more than expected and I fear I may have to wait until the Christmas break to work through them.  This month I feel there has been a real step up in the pace of my project, things are falling into place very nicely.

I have spent more time with designer makers, they have all been extremely positive about my project.  I feel this is definitely the right project for me and the my question iteration is jumping around a lot less.  At the moment my question is:


How can traditional practices and values be maintained by combining crafting with contemporary culture?

This month we have also had a project, 'Life in a box' which is extremely interesting, it has definitely helped most of the group collect their thoughts and ideas together.

Powerless Illuminating Tubing

This flexible glow in the dark plastic can keep glowing for up to 20hours after only 5 minutes of exposure to sunlight. 

Life in a Box

My initial brainstorm for this project is documented below:

Then I thought further about life forms, different types and their needs:

carbon-based
water-based
habitates
signalling and self-sustaining processes
metabolism
homeostasis
grow, repsond to stimuli, reproduce
bioshperes
plants, aniamsl, funghi, archaea, bacteria
community
symbiosis
energy, water, temperature, atmosphere, gravity, nutrients, solar protection

I felt like part of this project was to slightly predict the future, what would happen in this coming year, what my project needed and how it would evolve.  This led me to think of tortoises, who of course have their own box, and this box in traditional chinese cultures was used to make predictions.  They used to call tortoise shells, oracle bones, and would crush them up and use the powder to predict what was going to happen.

The tortoise is very reclusive, it has its own home, it can hide, be protected, needs light, water and vegetation.  It has its own transport method, space to grow and development, and is known for being slowing moving!  Less haste!

I decided my life form would be a tortoise, and that the different parts of its shell would represent decisions, milestones, goals, aspirations, nourishment, fears, and that I would display the decision making process on it. 

When thinking about my challenges, I came up with the following:

time - organisation
confidence
momentum
fear
engaging with stakeholders/gate keepers
ebergy
creative and metaphorical leaps
the whole balancing act

My design process went through a number of phases, the main being a patchwork quilt type tortoise shell, with different words and pieces to dimensionalise my challenges.  I gave the tortoise a lift raft, it was held in place by milestones that once completed released the tortoise, once it was confident enough to fend for itself.

My life in a box can be seen below:

Apparati Effimeri

APPARATI EFFIMERI Urban Reflex from Apparati Effimeri on Vimeo.


So amazing
So beautiful
So inspiring
I need to see this live for myself...

Video Ethnography

Today I was thinking about how craft people communicate craft knowledge, and wondering if I could carry out an ethnographic study to understand this better.

Life in a Box

 MADS YEAR ONE PART TIME MODE 2010

Term 3 Project:  LIFE IN A BOX

Wednesday 10 November – Wednesday 24 November

Introduction

This project invites you to employ the skills you have developed in giving dimension to your question, in order to construct an artifact-critique of your journey to date and the goals that it represents. You will be working on this project over a two-week period, in the run-up to the Academic Tutorial on 24 November.

Brief

Your question and your artifact should by now have acquired a life of their own. This life-form currently needs the protection of a box – and its own dedicated life-support system – before it can flourish independently in the outside world. “LIFE IN A BOX” invites you to give dimension to this life-form that you have created, as well as the life-support systems that support its fragile existence. Life support systems provide all of the sustainable needs required for continuance of life – and remember that these needs can go far beyond biological requirements. In time, your life-form may grow to maturity – and leave its protective box. 

Your design and making skills should be focused on clarification of the connections between the various parts as much as the parts themselves. We are much more interested in your ability to communicate ideas and knowledge than your ability as designers/artists. Please remember that if you lack the confidence to create your own artifact then it is perfectly legitimate to find someone to help you realize your needs

Presentation

Your artifact must be portable, and must be available to show to your tutor on 24 November. Technological requirements should be kept to a minimum. Your box and the representation of your project as the life-form within should address at least the following questions:

• What kind of life-form represents your project?
• What kind of box is it contained in?
• What life-support systems have you included?
• What is the connection between your goals and the decisions you have made?
• Why have you designed your box and life-support systems in this particular way?
• How exactly do your life-support systems operate?
• How will your life-form be enabled to develop?
• How will you increase your understanding of the life-form you have created?
• How, and why, might your life-form die?
• If your life-form survives, what might be its future?

Criteria

The project will be assessed against the following criterion:

• Your ability to give dimension to complex ideas through an artifact
• Your ability to critique your personal journey
• Your ability to sum up succinctly how you have progressed
• The clarity and relevance of your artifact presentation – including your life-form, the box, and life-support systems
• Your ability to focus on essential points
• The level of risk-taking your artifact presentation displays
• It is vital to appreciate that any artifact you create in response to this brief will be assessed on its potential to give dimension to your project and journey to date – NOT on your ability to produce a finished or finely-crafted “shiny object”.
• Your ability to reframe your project in the light of positive and negative feedback/experience and other sources of relevant knowledge

I have designed the questions for my survey this week and sent it out to everyone I know using Impressity, the also advertise surveys on their website, so people I don't know can complete this, and hopefully I will get a better mix of answers.  I have also sent out a separate survey to people heavily involved in the craft industry, like the people at Craft Central and the founders of craft cafes etc.  

The main consumer survey:

 

What kinds of group activities do you do with your friends and family?

 

            Eating

            Drinking

            Playing

            Watching films/tv/listening to music

            Making something- baking, crafts, painting

            DIY

            Travelling together

            Reading

            Relaxing

Do you ever handmake gifts or cards?

  

Yes

No

No, but would like to learn

Have you ever been on an arts or crafts course?

 

Yes

No

No, but would be interested in attending one

How much quality time do you spend with your friends and family each week?

0-2hrs

3-5hrs

6-8hrs

10-12hrs

12+hrs

Do you think its important to spend time with your friends and family?

 

Yes

No

Yes, but struggling to find enough time

Have you ever learnt a skill from a friend or family member that you will pass on to other generations?

 

Yes

No

Have you ever taught someone a new skill? If so, how did it feel?

 

Yes

No

Please enter comments here:

Did your parents make things with you as a child?

 

Yes

No

How often do spend time each week with people from older and younger generations? 

0-2hrs

3-5hrs

6-8hrs

10-12hrs

12+hrs

How many hours a day do spend online?

 

0-1

1-3

3-5

5-7

8+

Are you an active participant in forums and social networking sites?

 

Neither

Forums

Social networks

Both

Have you ever read/watched a tutorial online to learn a new skill? If so, what did you learn, did you find this useful?

 

Yes

No

Please enter comments here:

Would learning face to face have been more enjoyable?

 

Yes

No

Not sure

How many times have you made flat-pack furniture? If so, did you enjoy this process?

  

never

1-2times

3-5times

5+ times

Please enter comments here:

Do you think it would be more enjoyable with the help of friends and family?

 

Yes

No

Have you ever customised an item of clothing or furniture yourself? If so, did you enjoy this? If not, would you like to know how to customise or personalise items?

  

never

1-2times

3-5times

5+ times

Please enter comments here:

Have you ever designed a piece of clothing, accessory or something for you home yourself?

  

never

1-2times

3-5times

5+ times

Do you recycle?

Never

Yes at work

Yes at home

Only certain things that I am told to

Yes I make the effort to reuse and recycle whatever I can

Do you ever reuse items for a new and different use?

  

Yes

No

Have you ever used objects you no longer needed in a different way, or combined them with something else to make something new?

  

Yes

No

I often try to reuse items

Would you prefer your belongings to be:

 

            Handmade

            Individual

            Customisable

            Mass manufactured

            Locally sourced

            Perfect

            Good quality

            Expensive

            Affordable

            Eco-friendly

Age Group

 

Under 30 years

31 to 40 years

Over 40 years

Sex

Female

Male

Marital status

 

engaged

married

divorced

single in a relationship

single not in a relationship

Children

Yes

No

The following are what I would like to find out from professionals currently working in the crafting industry:

Have you noticed an increase in interest in crafting, customising, learning new skills etc?

 

What courses are most popular?

 

What are the types of people coming to workshops? ages/family members/groups etc

 

Have you noticed an increase in the numbers of designer makers wanting to get involved and make the most of the facilities you offer?

 

What changes have you noticed that the recession has made for the creative practices and designer/makers?

 

What do you feel crafting can bring to contemporary society?

 

Make Do and Mend

An amazing evening - David Attenborough's First Life

An amazing evening - David Attenborough's First Life
Last night I went to a special Sir David Attenborough talk, I was so excited before, during and still now. He was as wonderful as on the TV, and answered all the questions of the little kids along the front row. He was passionate and dynamic, I was absolutely thrilled and captured by every word!

Today I have been carrying out a bit more online research looking to see if craft is becoming mainstream, the affect the recession has had on creativity, handmade items and consumer trends.

Areas of research:

Communities
People
Groups

Why they do crafts
Why they come together
What do they want to learn

What groups already exist?

Rose Wallpaper

"Once flowers have already bloomed, they are usually thrown away. So that they can be enjoyed for longer and to create something of value from the waste, Zoubida Tulkens made wallpaper from rose petals. She collected rejected roses from flower growers, removed the petals, and made each one smooth using a flat-iron. Using a natural glue, Tulkens stuck the petals on wallpaper. Each sheet of wallpaper has it’s own pattern, and four sheets together create a larger pattern."