Making Futures V Edition Crafting a Sustainable Modernity: (towards a maker aesthetics of production and consumption)

Abstract

It gives me enormous pleasure to introduce this, the fifth volume of the proceedings of the biennial international Making Futures conference, which took place in September 2017 at the magnificently located Mount Edgcumbe country house, in what was our fourth visit to this site since the series began in 2009.

2009 to 2017 represents five biennial conferences, making this a first decade anniversary edition, and thus amounting to a little over ten years of operations. This is indeed a long time in the hyper-fast changing academic environment of today. Therefore, I’d like to thank the Plymouth College of Art senior leadership, for their vision and perception in standing behind and supporting this long-standing series through these uncertain times. Their far-sightedness has been confirmed as with each edition the series appears ever more relevant to the contemporary moment. Indeed, the creative impulses driving Making Futures show no signs of losing their significance. In fact, quite the opposite. The times we now move in reveal the Making Futures agenda - to explore the potential of emerging maker ecologies as ‘change agents’ built around contemporary artists-craftspeople, makers and designers and neo-artisanal micro-entrepreneurs - to be more relevant with each event in our series.

What I want to do with this introduction to the 5th Journal edition is, first, say something about the 2017 Crafting a Sustainable Modernity theme. I will then briefly move on to say something on the related subject of crafting community and social making. This topic, while present in all of the Making Futures series, particularly came to the fore in many discussions surrounding the 2017 event. As such it is likely to form the principle theme of our 2019 international conference edition. Finally, I will return to, and end on the structure and logistics of the 2017 programme and this journal edition.