Journal

WHAT
MADE IN Platform for Contemporary Crafts & Design is a research, design, and heritage initiative encouraging collaboration and knowledge exchange between traditional craftspeople and contemporary designers, as well as other experts in the fields of culture and science. The platform addresses issues central to preservation and explores new articulations of embodied knowledge found in the rich legacy of European craftsmanship. Similarly, it examines possible avenues of diversification and repurposing by way of mutual learning and by imagining new approaches to thinking through contemporary art and design practices.

The aim is to highlight new material research approaches and other design processes related to topics like the degradation of natural resources, extraction, and models of sustainable production.

WHY
The MADE IN platform emerged out of a heightened awareness of the crucial role that crafts play in creating and sustaining local identity. Furthermore, crafts have the potential to play a unique role in the transition to sustainable, innovative, circular production models that rely primarily on local resources and skills. Alongside encouraging the re-use/repair of existing products, craft promotes slower, more responsible consumption, and creates a value system that transcends the omnipresent logic of global mass production.

The MADE IN platform reflects the increasing number of projects by a new generation of designers and environmentalists that are turning their attention to diverse cultures of making in order to create sustainable production processes and circular material cycles based on an inclusive relationship with the natural environment. Taking a place-based processual approach, invited artists, designers, and craftspeople will work on specific localities and reflect on particular micro-contexts in terms of the exploitation of materials and its regenerative potentials, with a particular focus on soil, plants, and the sea. In so doing, the project will move beyond a human-centred perspective towards a life-centred one, infused with science and nature.

HOW
The MADE IN platform is structured as a series of activities designed to complement and build on one another in order to show the relevance of crafts, as a connector between ecology and culture, in contemporary society. The activities will promote the importance of contemporary design and art practices, innovative technologies, and transdisciplinary thinking in overcoming the perception of crafts as non-inventive and obsolete, instead integrating them into the core of the ecological debate.

The activities consist of:
- creating a publicly available database of crafts and craftspeople, transdisciplinary expertise, and natural resources related to crafts and design;
- knowledge transfer and collaborations in the form of residencies, workshops, training courses, and a summer school;
- educational and discourse programmes in the form of conferences, seminars, and stakeholders' events;
- dissemination of the project outcomes through a publication, a series of exhibitions, and a website – www.madein-platform.com

WHO 
MADE IN Platform for Contemporary Crafts & Design represents the direct continuation of an earlier project MADE IN: Crafts–Design Narratives, which ran from 2018 to 2021 with co-funding from CREA and which brought together six partners from four countries: Museum of Arts and Crafts, and Oaza, both Croatia; Museum of Architecture and Design, Slovenia; Nova Iskra and Mikser, both Serbia; and Werkraum Bregenzerwald, Austria. This earlier, small-scale project was a pioneer in mapping the craftspeople in the region and facilitating knowledge exchange between them and designers. The results of the project raised relevant questions about the evolution of crafts and design, and the challenges confronting the two fields today.

Made in Platform represents the direct continuation of an earlier project MADE IN: Crafts–Design Narratives, which ran from 2018 to 2021. It now involves 10 partners from 6 countries to form a consortium with a broad range of expertise: Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), Ljubljana, Slovenia (coordinator); Center Rog Ljubljana, Slovenia; Zenica City Museum (MGZ), Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Drugo More, Rijeka, Croatia; State Art Collections Dresden, Museum of Decorative Arts (SKD), Dresden, Germany; Museum of Arts and Crafts (MUO), Zagreb, Croatia; Oaza, Zagreb, Croatia; Nova Iskra Creative Hub (Nova Iskra), Belgrade, Serbia; Passa Ao Futuro (PAF), Lisbon, Portugal; and the University of Applied Sciences Zwickau (WHZ), Schneeberg, Germany.

The platform aims to include more than 1000 craftspeople, designers, researchers, cultural and scientific professionals, and members of wider audiences, all of whom will participate in various project activities.

The activities will officially begin with Crafting the Future Kick-off conference on 31 March at State Art Collections Dresden, Museum of Decorative Arts in Dresden. More here.

More about MADE IN Platform for Contemporary Crafts & Design HERE.