Making / Thinking: The craft of education

Abstract

‘Craft’ as a field or domain for many in art and design is contentious, perhaps we are more at ease to talk of something being well ‘crafted’ or having ‘craftsmanship’. ‘Craft’ therefore seems a loaded term, yet it is synonymous with the ‘maker’ label and vice-versa that a maker is located in / of craft. Is this just semantics or should we see differences in makers and that of what it is to make in / of craft? Can the maker knowledge and outcomes contribute to something external of the individual practice? At the core is an experiential knowledge of materials borne out of the intimate experience of making. When the methods and expertise of the individual become externalize they demonstrate changing practices and the changing nature of context in which knowledge can inform, create and innovate disciplines within the domain but also an agent central for interdisciplinary art and design dialogues.

The experiential ‘making’ methodology maybe consider a fundamental, yet it never the less has lagged behind in its location in, and to informing academic research. In recent years the maker, practitioner and the ‘Craft sector’ (if this is appropriate terminology) is finding a voice to articulate experiences of making that had been felt shouldn’t or couldn’t be communicated by any others means other than by the made outcome. It is only by a full articulation of the process of the experiential by its trial, experimentation, making and thinking that this knowledge finds a rightful place and location in research within academia. Edwards states the strong ‘dialogue between maker and object; an interdependency between process and intention which is linked by skill’, has unique understandings for art and design research. *(Harrod 1997 p351) Arguably, making is thinking and thinking is making, the whole process is a holistic reflexive activity that focuses the maker to communicate from the introspective personal knowledge to the external fore, why and how engagement with a making practice can shape and inform research outcomes.

The practitioner’s knowledge gained through making has shifted from discipline specifics to wider approaches that inform socialite debates and application. Ironically this engagement of interdisciplinary making practices is often in opposition with the interests of the contemporary art and design institute. If there is to be a true (re)turn of the core fundamental of making how can we align this with research outcomes and more importantly how to embed as an imperative of contemporaneous art and design education activities?

This paper aims to open up debate from the maker practitioners’ perspectives aligned to that of a pedagogy practice, how the role and function of making should reflect and reside in the art and design institutes in an era that talks of the ‘sustainable maker’ with that, of what for many see as the dilution of the discipline specifics, in the ‘sustainability’ of the art and design institute.

* Edwards Clive (1997) ‘The Castration of Skill?’ Harrod Tanya (edited) ‘Obscure Objects of Desire’ London, Crafts Council